Development of anti-human IgM nanobodies as universal reagents for general immunodiagnostics.

Nanobodies are the smallest antibody fragments which bind to antigens with high affinity and specificity. Due to their outstanding physicochemical stability, simplicity and cost-effective production, nanobodies have become powerful agents in therapeutic and diagnostic applications. In this work, the advantages of nanobodies were exploited to develop generic and standardized anti-human IgM reagents for serology and IgM B-cell analysis.