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Abstract

Antibodies are recovered and isolated from the sera of a number 'n' of patients each of which have or have had the same given disease so that each of the 'n' patients has, within a large number of different antibodies, some antibodies uniquely associated with the same disease of interest. The antibodies of a first patient are bound to a support surface. To carry out initial screening libraries of molecules are brought into contact with the bound antibodies of the first patient under conditions where binding will occur. Secondary screening is then carried out by extracting and labeling the antibodies of a second patient and using the labeled antibodies to probe the molecules (peptides) isolated in the initial screening. Many of the non-disease specific antibodies (of the second patient) will not bind to the molecules (peptides) of the isolated bacteriophage which bound to the antibodies of the first patient. Hence, the molecules (peptides) which are common to both patients with the same disease will be identified. The process may be repeated with labeled antibodies from a third, fourth, etc. patient to obtain those molecules (peptides) which are common to all patients with the disease, and have the highest affinity to the antibodies specific to the disease. Copies of the characterized molecules (peptides) can be synthesized and bound to a support for use as an assay to detect the presence of antibodies specific to a disease.

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