Fenobody: A Ferritin-Displayed Nanobody with High Apparent Affinity and Half-Life Extension

Nanobodies consist of a single domain variable fragment of a camelid heavy-chain antibody. Nanobodies have potential applications in biomedical fields because of their simple production procedures and low cost. Occasionally, nanobody clones of interest exhibit low affinities for their target antigens, which, together with their short half-life limit bioanalytical or therapeutic applications. Here, we developed a novel platform we named fenobody, in which a nanobody developed against H5N1 virus is displayed on the surface of ferritin in the form of a 24mer. We constructed a fenobody by substituting the fifth helix of ferritin with the nanobody. TEM analysis showed that nanobodies were displayed on the surface of ferritin in the form of 6 × 4 bundles, and that these clustered nanobodies are flexible for antigen binding in spatial structure. Comparing fenobodies with conventional nanobodies currently used revealed that the antigen binding apparent affinity of anti-H5N1 fenobody was dramatically increased (∼360-fold). Crucially, their half-life extension in a murine model was 10-fold longer than anti-H5N1 nanobody. In addition, we found that our fenobodies are highly expressed in Escherichia coli, and are both soluble and thermo-stable nanocages that self-assemble as 24-polymers. In conclusion, our results demonstrate that fenobodies have unique advantages over currently available systems for apparent affinity enhancement and half-life extension of nanobodies. Our fenobody system presents a suitable platform for various large-scale biotechnological processes and should greatly facilitate the application of nanobody technology in these areas.