Advanced Phage Display Technology: Applications and Limitations in development of biological products

Phage display technology is a powerful and progressing technique with a wide range of applications that, has proven its effectiveness in many of biological fields, including, production of anti-toxin antibodies, drug discovery, production of monoclonal antibodies, molecular imaging, gene therapy, vaccine development, isolation of specific binding peptides for venom components, studies of immunogenicity, development of new vaccines, and nanotechnology. One of the important areas of this technology is the production of anti-toxin antibodies against venom of poisonous animals, especially snakes. With the advances that this technology has made in the production of anti-toxin antibodies, it seems that in the not too far future, this technology can be used to produce new generation of antivenoms and solving of the existing antivenom problems. Despite of the many applications of the phage display technology, however, like other techniques, it has some problems such as need to high skill, losing the desired clones or no pairing of light and heavy corresponding chains same as the original antibody-producing cells, which may be seen when using the phage display technology. In this review article, an attempt has been made to examine phage display technology, its applications and limitations.