CaMouse™ — Pioneering VHH Discovery

Watsonbio is proud to introduce CaMouse™—a next-generation, chromosome-engineered mouse platform designed to revolutionize single-domain antibody (VHH) discovery. Engineered with endogenous immunoglobulin heavy chain (IgH) locus, CaMouse™ produces high-affinity, fully functional heavy-chain-only antibodies (HcAbs) in vivo. These antibodies contain VHHs (variable domains of heavy-chain antibodies), enabling direct access to a diverse, drug-like repertoire.

Why CaMouse™?

Traditional VHH (nanobody) generation using llamas is labor-intensive, expensive, and logistically complex. In contrast, CaMouse™ offers a fast, scalable, and cost-effective alternative by combining:

• Total 144 endogenous VH genes with a unique designed mouse constant region (Patented)
• Robust immune response capability
• High diversity of single domain antibody repertoire
• Flexible immunization protocols: protein, mRNA, DNA, whole cell, and hapten

Validated across a wide array of antigens (case studies available upon request) —CaMouse™ consistently deliver HcAbs with excellent solubility, stability, and specificity. Their compatibility with serum-free expression systems ensures rapid production of recombinant HcAbs suitable for research, diagnostics, and therapeutic development.

This innovative platform integrates seamlessly with established workflows, including:

• Hybridoma technology
• Phage and yeast display
• Single B-cell screening
• Direct VHH repertoire cloning

This innovative approach delivers superior consistency, reproducibility, and throughput across the antibody discovery process.

Case Study

Integrated Discovery and Optimization Workflow

The CaMouse™ Single-Domain Antibody Platform and Oligo Pool Optimization Technology together establish a comprehensive and data-driven workflow for rapid VHH discovery and maturation.

The CaMouse™ system leverages a proprietary mammalian immunization model that produces high-affinity, sequence-verified VHHs derived from a conventional mouse immune repertoire. This platform maintains mammalian folding, solubility, and post-translational fidelity, enabling generation of high-quality binders against challenging targets, including GPCRs, membrane proteins, and cytokines.

The downstream Oligo Pool Optimization process integrates massively parallel oligonucleotide synthesis, deep mutational scanning, and AI-assisted sequence–function mapping to systematically enhance antibody affinity, thermostability, and expression yield. This synthetic evolution approach eliminates the need for re-immunization and shortens optimization timelines by more than 50%.

Together, these technologies provide a continuous and experimentally validated pipeline from antigen discovery to optimized, humanization-ready VHH candidates, enabling reproducible, high-throughput development of next-generation therapeutic and diagnostic antibodies.