Enzymatic digestion of monoclonal antibodies.

Originally, digestion of antibodies by proteolytic enzymes was used to study their structure. Many diverse structures can be obtained by fragmentation of the different classes of antibody with different enzymes, or by using the same enzyme and changing the conditions Fig. 1). Not all the fragments obtained have significant binding activity; for example, in several studies by this author Fv fragments obtained by digestion have been found to have lost their binding activity. Fragmentation of antibody is now usually carried out to introduce required properties (e.g., a decrease in molecular size), or to remove undesirable properties (e.g., nonspecific Fc receptor binding).