Abzyme will partner with your company to solve typical issues encountered in antibody drug development, such as protein expression, thermostability, folding, target affinity, on-target/off-tumor toxicities and more.
Conditionally-active Antibodies: It is well known that the tumor microenvironment is acidic compared to physiological pH. Abzyme can optimize the binding profile of your antibody for a specific pH range, so as to have a high on-rate at low pH and high off-rate at neutral pH or vice versa. Specific binding at this pH can essentially render this antibody inactive in normal tissues and active in the tumor microenvironment. Such specific activity would minimize on-target, off-tumor toxicity and increase the antibody’s mean residence time by reducing binding to non-therapeutic targets. This allows the therapeutic dose to be much lower. On the other hand, fine tuning candidate antibodies to bind specifically at high pH and dissociate at low pH can increase the antibody’s plasma half-life by facilitating antibody recycling via neonatal Fc receptors in the acidic endosome.
Expression, Thermostability and Folding: Good expression, thermostability and proper folding are key attributes for successful biologic manufacturing and storage. Abzyme will work with your company to improve the attributes of your existing antibodies while retaining their binding affinity. Starting from the gene encoding the original antibody, a self-diversifying antibody library will be built. From the highly diversified library, we will isolate well-expressed, well-displayed, and thermostable clones with high affinity.
Target Affinity: While an antibody may bind to the correct epitope and has neutralizing properties, sometimes the affinity is not optimal for therapeutic applications. Abzyme will work with you to improve or moderate your antibody affinities to suit your therapeutic applications.
Humanization: Antibody humanization is to reduce the immunogenicity while preserving an antibody’s therapeutic qualities. The process requires both bioinformatic analysis and physical experiments. Abzyme’s humanization approach allows rapid selection of humanized antibody variants with attributes optimized for therapeutic applications.