Rescue of a neutralizing anti-viral antibody fragment from an intracellular polyclonal repertoire expressed in mammalian cells

The intracellular expression of recombinant antibodies in mammalian cells is an experimental strategy to inhibit in vivo the function of selected molecules. However, one limitation of this technology is represented by the unpredictable behaviour of antibodies, under conditions of intracellular expression. For this reason, it would be desirable to exploit intracellular expression of antibodies to select or rescue more efficient ones from a polyclonal mixture. In this work we have successfully explored this possibility by rescuing a neutralizing anti-viral antibody fragment from an intracellularly expressed anti-reverse transcriptase polyclonal repertoire.