John McCafferty

Who is John McCafferty?

John McCafferty is a British scientist, one of the founders of Cambridge Antibody Technology, well known as one of the inventors of scFv antibody fragment phage display, a technology that revolutionised the monoclonal antibody drug discovery. Later improvements of antibody phage display technology enables the display of millions of different antibody fragments on the surface of filamentous phage and subsequent selection of highly specific recombinant antibodies to any given target. This technology is widely exploited in pharmaceutical industry for the discovery and development of therapeutic monoclonal antibodies to treat mainly cancer, inflammatory and infectious diseases. One of the most successful was HUMIRA, discovered by Cambridge Antibody Technology as D2E7 and developed and marketed by Abbott Laboratories. HUMIRA, an antibody to TNF alpha, was the world's first phage display derived fully human antibody, which achieved annual sales exceeding $1bn therefore achieving blockbuster status.