Immunogen, Inc.

Stephen M Searle

Braydon Charles Guild

Anthony R Rees

Michael A Roguska

Jan T Pedersen

The invention relates to a method for providing, via resurfacing, humanized rodent antibodies that have improved therapeutic efficacy due to the presentation of a human surface in the variable region. In the method, (1) position alignments of a pool of antibody heavy and light chain variable regions is generated to give a set of heavy and light chain variable region framework surface exposed positions wherein the alignment positions for all variable regions are at least about 98% identical; (2) a set of heavy and light chain variable region framework surface exposed amino acid residues is defined for a rodent antibody (or fragment thereof); (3) a set of heavy and light chain variable region framework surface exposed amino acid residues that is most closely identical to the set of rodent surface exposed amino acid residues is identified; (4) the set of heavy and light chain variable region framework surface exposed amino acid residues defined in step (2) is substituted with the set of heavy and light chain variable region framework surface exposed amino acid residues identified in step (3), except for those amino acid residues that are within 5 .ANG.ngstroms of any atom of any residue of the complementarity determining regions of the rodent antibody; and (5) the humanized rodent antibody having binding specificity is produced.

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Bath, United Kingdom

Stephen M Searle