Antibody Affinity Maturation by Computational Design

The immune systems protect our bodies from foreign molecules or antigens, where antibodies play important roles. Antibodies evolve over time upon antigen encounter by somatically mutating their genome sequences. The end result is a series of antibodies that display higher affinities and specificities to specific antigens. This process is called affinity maturation. Recent improvements in computer hardware and modeling algorithms now enable the rational design of protein structures and functions, and several works on computer-aided antibody design have been published. In this chapter, we briefly describe computational methods for antibody affinity maturation, focusing on methods for sampling antibody conformations and for scoring designed antibody variants. We also discuss lessons learned from the successful computer-aided design of antibodies.