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The ability of monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) to target specific antigens with high precision has led to an increasing demand to generate them for therapeutic use in many disease areas. Historically, the discovery of therapeutic mAbs has relied upon the immunization of mammals and various in vitro display technologies. While the routine immunization of rodents yields clones that are stable in serum and have been selected against vast arrays of endogenous, non-target self-antigens, it is often difficult to obtain species cross-reactive mAbs owing to the generally high sequence similarity shared across human antigens and their mammalian orthologs. In vitro display technologies bypass this limitation, but lack an in vivo screening mechanism, and thus may potentially generate mAbs with undesirable binding specificity and stability issues. Chicken immunization is emerging as an attractive mAb discovery method because it combines the benefits of both in vivo and in vitro display methods. Since chickens are phylogenetically separated from mammals, their proteins share less sequence homology with those of humans, so human proteins are often immunogenic and can readily elicit rodent cross-reactive clones, which are necessary for in vivo proof of mechanism studies. Here, we compare the binding characteristics of mAbs isolated from chicken immunization, mouse immunization, and phage display of human antibody libraries. Our results show that chicken-derived mAbs not only recapitulate the kinetic diversity of mAbs sourced from other methods, but appear to offer an expanded repertoire of epitopes. Further, chicken-derived mAbs can bind their native serum antigen with very high affinity, highlighting their therapeutic potential.

Gene targeting by homologous recombination or by sequence-specific nucleases allows the precise modification of genomes and genes to elucidate their functions. Although gene targeting has been used extensively to modify the genomes of mammals, fish, and amphibians, a targeting technology has not been available for the avian genome. Many of the principles of humoral immunity were discovered in chickens, yet the lack of gene targeting technologies in birds has limited biomedical research using this species. Here we describe targeting the joining (J) gene segment of the chicken Ig heavy chain gene by homologous recombination in primordial germ cells to establish fully transgenic chickens carrying the knockout. In homozygous knockouts, Ig heavy chain production is eliminated, and no antibody response is elicited on immunization. Migration of B-lineage precursors into the bursa of Fabricius is unaffected, whereas development into mature B cells and migration from the bursa are blocked in the mutants. Other cell types in the immune system appear normal. Chickens lacking the peripheral B-cell population will provide a unique experimental model to study avian immune responses to infectious disease. More generally, gene targeting in avian primordial germ cells will foster advances in diverse fields of biomedical research such as virology, stem cells, and developmental biology, and provide unique approaches in biotechnology, particularly in the field of antibody discovery.

Transgenic chickens expressing human sequence antibodies would be a powerful tool to access human targets and epitopes that have been intractable in mammalian hosts because of tolerance to conserved proteins. To foster the development of the chicken platform, it is beneficial to validate transgene constructs using a rapid, cell culture-based method prior to generating fully transgenic birds. We describe a method for the expression of human immunoglobulin variable regions in the chicken DT40 B cell line and the further diversification of these genes by gene conversion. Chicken VL and VH loci were knocked out in DT40 cells and replaced with human VK and VH genes. To achieve gene conversion of human genes in chicken B cells, synthetic human pseudogene arrays were inserted upstream of the functional human VK and VH regions. Proper expression of chimeric IgM comprised of human variable regions and chicken constant regions is shown. Most importantly, sequencing of DT40 genetic variants confirmed that the human pseudogene arrays contributed to the generation of diversity through gene conversion at both the Igl and Igh loci. These data show that engineered pseudogene arrays produce a diverse pool of human antibody sequences in chicken B cells, and suggest that these constructs will express a functional repertoire of chimeric antibodies in transgenic chickens.