• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• 제18권8호
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• pp.1475-1481
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• 2008

B3 antibody specifically binds the $Lewis^Y$-related carbohydrate antigen of many carcinomas, and it is used as a model antibody in this study. In a previous study, the Fab fragment of the antibody was fused to a 38 kDa truncated form of Pseudomonas exotoxin A, PE38, to make Fab-PE38, where PE38 is fused to the Fd fragment of the Fab domain. This parent monomer molecule, Fab-PE38, had no cysteine in the hinge region, and it could not make a disulfide bond to form a disulfide bond bridged homodimer. In this study, we constructed three different kinds of divalent Fab-toxin fusion homodimers where the toxin is fused to the light chain of Fab, $(Fab-PE38fl)_2$. In addition to the PE38 toxin fused to the light chain, these three molecules have different hinge sequences hi, h2, and h3 making Fabh1-, Fabh2-, and Fabh3-PE38fl monomers, respectively. These hinges contain only one cysteine on different positions of the hinge sequence. The disulfide bond between the hinge region of two monomers forms homodimers $(Fabh1-PE38fl)_2$, $(Fabh2-PE38fl)_2$, and $(Fabh3-PE38fl)_2$. The refolding yields of these dimers were 5-16-fold higher than a previously constructed dimer where the PE38 was fused to the Fd fragment $(Fabh2-PE38)_2$ [8]. Our data suggest that the steric repulsion between the two PE38s in $(Fabh1-PE38)_2$ during disulfide bridge formation is relieved by fusing it at the end of the light chain. The best cytotoxicity value of these dimers showed about 2.5-fold higher on an MCF7 cell line than that of the monovalent reference molecule in ng/ml scale, which is 15-fold higher in pM scale.