Novel rabbit antibody humanization methods and humanized rabbit antibodies

摘要

The present invention is directed to novel and improved methods for humanizing rabbit heavy and light variable regions. The resulting humanized rabbit heavy and light chains and antibodies and antibody fragments containing are well suited for use in immunotherapy and immunodiagnosis as they retain the antigen binding affinity of the parent antibody and based on their very high level of sequence identity to human antibody sequences should be essentially non-immunogenic in humans. The invention exemplifies the protocol for the manufacture of therapeutic humanized anti-human TNF-alpha and anti-human IL-6 antibodies.