Technologies and Capabilities
We have significant expertise in immune system biology, cancer biology, and all things related to antibody/biologic discovery and early stage biologic development.
Human Antibodies. We have developed display technologies using highly expressing VH and VL regions from human antibodies. We are able to rapidly identify new fully human antibodies to any soluble drug target of interest.
Bovine Antibodies. Cows have CDR3 regions of up to 70 amino acids in length, which is dramatically longer than antibodies from other species which are typically much less than 20 amino acids. These ‘ultralong’ CDR3s protrude far from the antibody surface and fold into unique ‘minidomains’ that can bind challenging recessed or cryptic epitopes.
Antibodies from other species. Other species like rabbits, camels, sharks, and chickens have unique antibody structures and genetic mechanisms for generating their repertoires. Through our studies of human and cow repertoires, we have developed the expertise to identify unique antibodies from several vertebrate species.
Arrayed Antibody Libraries. We were the inventors of the ‘arrayed antibody’ discovery platform, originally employed by Fabrus LLC, and now licensed to Taurus Biosciences. Arrayed libraries enable the small-molecule discovery paradigm to be applied to recombinant antibodies. The importance of the arrayed platform, as opposed to display systems, is that discovery can occur efficiently and directly on the cell surface, enabling antibody discovery to challenging multi-pass membrane proteins like GPCRs.
Antibody Drug Conjugates. We were amongst the first to encode non-natural amino acids into antibodies in order to site-specifically couple drugs, detection moieties or nucleic acids. We can produce recombinant antibodies with a molecular “handle” that can easily be conjugated to any of a number of important molecules.
Cell-based immune assays. We have expertise in T-cell, NK, and other immune cell-based assays, including antibody cytotoxicity assays like ADCC.
We collaborate with university, non-profit, biotech, and pharmaceutical companies in these areas. Contact us if you are interested in innovating technologies and advancing programs with us.