Application of colony lift assay in the medullary thyroid carcinoma screening of single-chain variable fragment antibody phage library

The aim of the present study was to establish a colony lift assay for medullary thyroid carcinoma (MTC) cells and use it to screen a single-chain variable fragment antibody phage library targeted against MTC. This library was enriched with ‘adsorption–elution–amplification' in several selection rounds (SRs) and was then tested by a colony lift assay and random selection in each SR. The positive clones were scored among assay clones and the proportions that were obtained by each approach were compared. The results showed that positive clones for MTC antigen across one to several SRs accounted, respectively, for 0% (0/96), 3.13% (3/96), 10.42% (10/96) and 58.33% (56/96) in the random pick/selection approach, and 0.63% (2/318), 6.06% (12/198), 12.35% (20/162) and 63.51% (94/148) in the colony lift assay (SR1, χ2 = 0.607, P = 0.436; SR2, χ2 = 1.151, P = 0.283; SR3, χ2 = 0.218, P = 0.640; SR4, χ2 = 0.660, P = 0.417). There was no significant difference between the two methods, which suggested that the rates of...