Abstract
This study was aimed to investigate the effect of a single-chain fragment variable antibody of connective tissue growth factor (anti-CTGF scFv) against the differentiation of fibroblast into myofibroblast. The scFv antibody was firstly expressed in Escherichia coli cells and was then purified by affinity chromatography. The yield scFv protein reached a purity over 95% after purification. Immunoreactivity assay demonstrated that scFv possessed a special affinity toward CTGF. RT-PCR, western blot, and immunofluorescence experiments showed that increased expression of α-smooth muscle actin induced by TGF-β1 could be suppressed by this scFv antibody through inhibiting the phosphorylation of Akt.
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Acknowledgments
We thanked the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province, China (no. BK2009274), the Science Foundation of Southeast University (no. 3290000102), and the National Science Foundation of China (grant numbers 30970809 and 30840042) for the financial support to this work. Meanwhile, we thanked Dr. Xiaobo Fan and Dr. Jing Xiong for the careful revision to this paper.
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Guoqiu Wu and Xiyong Wang contributed equally to this article.
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Wu, G., Wang, X., Deng, X. et al. A novel single-chain Fv antibody for connective tissue growth factor against the differentiation of fibroblast into myofibroblast. Appl Microbiol Biotechnol 93, 2475–2482 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00253-011-3755-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00253-011-3755-8