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Review
. 2022 Aug 6;22(1):245.
doi: 10.1186/s12935-022-02665-0.

Nanobodies; new molecular instruments with special specifications for targeting, diagnosis and treatment of triple-negative breast cancer

Hamid Bakherad #  1 , Fahimeh Ghasemi #  2 , Maryam Hosseindokht  3 , Hamed Zare  4
Affiliations
Review

Nanobodies; new molecular instruments with special specifications for targeting, diagnosis and treatment of triple-negative breast cancer

Hamid Bakherad et al. Cancer Cell Int. .

Abstract

Breast cancer is the most common type of cancer in women and the second leading cause of cancer death in female. Triple-negative breast cancer has a more aggressive proliferation and a poorer clinical diagnosis than other breast cancers. The most common treatments for TNBC are chemotherapy, surgical removal, and radiation therapy, which impose many side effects and costs on patients. Nanobodies have superior advantages, which makes them attractive for use in therapeutic agents and diagnostic kits. There are numerous techniques suggested by investigators for early detection of breast cancer. Nevertheless, there are fewer molecular diagnostic methods in the case of TNBC due to the lack of expression of famous breast cancer antigens in TNBC. Although conventional antibodies have a high ability to detect tumor cell markers, their large size, instability, and costly production cause a lot of problems. Since the HER-2 do not express in TNBC diagnosis, the production of nanobodies for the diagnosis and treatment of cancer cells should be performed against other antigens expressed in TNBC. In this review, nanobodies which developed against triple negative breast cancer, were classified based on type of antigen.

Keywords: Diagnosis; Nanobody; TNBC; Treatment; VHH.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that there are no conflicts of interest.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
VHH or nanobodies are derived from camel heavy chain antibodies. These nanobodies are labeled by various agents and are able to detect specific antigens in breast cancer tissues
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Nanobody production procedure. A camel was immunized with a desired antigen. After lymphocyte separation, mRNA isolation and cDNA synthesis were performed. The variable fragment of heavy-chain antibodies (HCAbs) was amplified by PCR and cloned into the phagemid vector. The variable fragment antibody (VHH) was displayed on the surface of an M13 phage. After panning and selection of colonies with the maximum affinity, soluble VHH was expressed in E. coli
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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