Abstract

Helicobacter pylori is one of the most common causes of infectious diseases around the world. Although combined antibiotic treatment for the infection exist, the development of therapies such as immunotherapy or an effective vaccine can be helpful for containment and prevention of the infection. Phage display technologies offer a simple way for selecting specific antibody fragments against a specific target. In this work, we report the construction of a phage display antibody library against H. pylori strain N2. The library is constituted of 2.4 × 10⁴ transformants. A total of 94 clones were randomly selected and screened against the N2 strain, where 22% of them recognized whole-cell extracts of H. pylori. Moreover, other 94 clones were screened against the J99 strain, where 12% of the clones recognized this strain. The scFv-E1N2 was selected and it showed high reactivity in ELISA experiments. Furthermore, it reacted with an antigen of 27 kDa in both strains of H. pylori tested in our study. In conclusion, this scFv library may be used for the selection of antibodies for the development of an immunodiagnostic test. Also, it may provide insights in the identification of antigens for the development of a new vaccine or immunotherapy.

Key words: Phage display libraries, scFv antibodies, Helicobacter pylori.