Abstract
The optimization of therapeutic antibodies is time-intensive and resource-demanding, largely because of the low-throughput screening of full-length antibodies (approximately 1 × 103 variants) expressed in mammalian cells, which typically results in few optimized leads. Here we show that optimized antibody variants can be identified by predicting antigen specificity via deep learning from a massively diverse space of antibody sequences. To produce data for training deep neural networks, we deep-sequenced libraries of the therapeutic antibody trastuzumab (about 1 × 104 variants), expressed in a mammalian cell line through site-directed mutagenesis via CRISPR–Cas9-mediated homology-directed repair, and screened the libraries for specificity to human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2). We then used the trained neural networks to screen a computational library of approximately 1 × 108 trastuzumab variants and predict the HER2-specific subset (approximately 1 × 106 variants), which can then be filtered for viscosity, clearance, solubility and immunogenicity to generate thousands of highly optimized lead candidates. Recombinant expression and experimental testing of 30 randomly selected variants from the unfiltered library showed that all 30 retained specificity for HER2. Deep learning may facilitate antibody engineering and optimization.
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Data availability
The main data supporting the results in this study are available within the paper and its Supplementary Information. The raw and analysed datasets generated during the study are too large to be publicly shared; however, they are available for research purposes from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
Code availability
Deep-learning models were built in Python v3.6.5 using the Keras v2.1.6 Sequential model as a wrapper for TensorFlow v1.8.0. The code and models used to perform the work in this study are available at the following github repository: https://github.com/dahjan/DMS_opt.
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Acknowledgements
We thank the ETH Zurich D-BSSE Single Cell Unit and the ETH Zurich D-BSSE Genomics Facility for support—in particular M. Di Tacchio, A. Gumienny, E. Burcklen and C. Beisel. We also thank the Vendruscolo Laboratory (Cambridge, UK), P. Sormanni in particular, for assistance with implementing the CamSol method on large libraries as well as the group of M. Nielson (DTU, Denmark) for providing an easy-to-use package for MHC class II affinity predictions. Funding was provided by the National Competence Center for Research on Molecular Systems Engineering.
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D.M.M., S.F., C.R.W. and S.T.R. developed the methodology. D.M.M. and S.T.R. designed the experiments and wrote the manuscript. D.M.M., C.R.W., S.F. and J.D. analysed the sequencing data and performed deep-learning analyses. P.G. and B.E.C. designed and performed the structural modelling experiments and analysis. C.J. generated in silico libraries. D.M.M. and R.A.E. performed experiments. B.W., S.M.M. and L.B. performed the cell-line development.
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ETH Zurich has filed for patent protection on the technology described herein, and D.M.M., S.F., C.R.W. and S.T.R. are named as co-inventors on this patent (International Filing Application PCT/IB2020/053370).
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Mason, D.M., Friedensohn, S., Weber, C.R. et al. Optimization of therapeutic antibodies by predicting antigen specificity from antibody sequence via deep learning. Nat Biomed Eng 5, 600–612 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41551-021-00699-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41551-021-00699-9
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