USE OF FERTILE TRANSGENIC ANIMALS FOR PRODUCING ANTIBODIES BEARING HUMAN VARIABLE REGIONS

摘要

The present invention relates inter alia to fertile non-human vertebrates such as mice and rats useful for producing antibodies bearing human variable regions, in which endogenous antibody chain expression has been inactivated. This inactivation leads to loss of ADAM6 genes located within the rodent heavy chain locus, said genes being important for fertility. Introduction of functional copies of said ADAM6 genes is shown to allow production of fertile mice.