- [Dr. Masat] I am Linda Masat. I am Head of European and Strategic Business Development, and I manage AlivaMab Discovery Services European, current and future potential customers. The goal of our organization is to meet our partners' antibody preclinical design goals, no matter how challenging they might be. We do this through rapid generation of large panels of molecularly diverse antibodies with deep functional and kinetic characterizations, developability assessment, and state-of-the-art engineering approaches. To achieve this, we combine the AlivaMab Mouse which is a unique and patent-protected human antibody transgenic mouse that has been adopted by several dozen companies, including top global pharmas with fully integrated and validated discovery capabilities. Our typical project timelines are three to four months from the start of immunization to the delivery of a panel of purified antibody plus the full data set to our partners. And Jonah will go through an example of a program that we are currently working on.
- [Dr. Rainey] Hi, my name is Jonah Rainey, I'm VP of Antibody Engineering and Protein Science at AlivaMab Discovery Services in San Diego, California. We work on dozens of antibody therapeutic projects at any given time with scopes ranging quite significantly, anything as simple as a soluble ligand to complex membrane multi-spanners including GPCRs. So, the iQue screening platform really helps us select the right leads, whether it's a simple blocking antibody or an engineered arm of a bi-specific antibody. So, right now, we're currently running a campaign that calls for a screen not only for binding but also internalization. This is important for antibodies whose mechanisms involve physical downregulation of cell surface targets, for instance, to prevent lag independent or lagging independent signaling, but can also be important for antibodies that need to deliver their cargo intracellularly. The latter, of course, an important characteristic of an antibody-drug conjugate. We use the iQue in a lot of different ways. But in the example of internalization assays for antibody-drug conjugates, we use specific protocols and reagents available off the shelf from Sartorius. So, the iQue is really quite unique and it's a platform that's really built for screening. So, we can use flow cytometry in a very high throughput manner whether we're looking for simple binding or whether we're looking for functional readouts. The foresight software that's used to run the instrument is probably as important as the hardware. First, the setup is really intuitive, really efficient. The instrument captures all the data in a high-resolution range without having to change any instruments setting, no PMT settings, or anything like that. So, as a result, it's actually really easy for users of a variety of experience levels to get up and running on this instrument very quickly. And the samples run so fast, you can run multiple 384 well plates in an afternoon. So, then when it comes to analysis, after running, the samples, the foresight software, comes back into the picture, and it's really flexible and powerful, really easy to use. So, we can make quick decisions and keep things moving quickly and get on to the next steps in our process. And then as far as maintenance goes with the instrument, the fluidics stay really clear, clogging isn't really an issue. So downtime is rare, which is really important for the amount of screening that we do. At AlivaMab Discovery Services, we have quite a few future initiatives that we're working on, including immune repertoire sequencing through next-generation sequencing and using that to identify extremely rare antibodies, further employing single-cell screening technologies to complement our current robust platforms to find the best leads. And then we're expanding our capabilities in developing bi-specific antibodies with optimal functional and drug-like properties. As far as the iQue screener goes in our future, we'll continue to push the flexibility of the platform. We'll use more multiplexing to measure binding, functions, cell parameters, and really get a complete picture in high throughput mode of everything that's going on with the cell population and the effect that the drug is having on it. Anytime I can maximize depth of content and speed up throughput, I'm happy.
- [Dr. Masat] It is extremely rewarding that in just over two years, multiple antibodies discovered by AlivaMab Discovery Services are advancing to the clinic. We are excited about the impact that we're having on the drug discovery community in realizing our vision of a healthier world through partnership that brings better medicine to patients faster.
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