Selected Sessions On-Demand

Watch full recordings of sessions from across the week

Synthetic DNA Technologies Enable Antibody Discovery and Optimization

Aaron Sato, PhD
Chief Scientific Officer, Biopharma, Twist Bioscience

Utilizing its proprietary DNA technology to write synthetic libraries, Twist Biopharma, a division of Twist Bioscience, provides the biotechnology industry with an end-to-end antibody discovery and optimization solution.

This solution includes (1) a panel of highly diverse synthetic naïve antibody phage display libraries, (2) several target class specific antibody phage display libraries focused on difficult-to-drug targets, (3) a Twist Antibody Optimization (TAO) platform for antibody affinity and developability optimization and (4) a high-throughput antibody expression service.

Amplifying Antibody Diversity: Single-cell Screening Combined with Repertoire Sequencing from Humanized Mice

Sherie Duncan, PhD
Senior Manager Programs and Partnerships
AbCellera

We identified hundreds of target-specific antibodies using high-throughput single-cell screening from humanized mice. To reveal greater diversity, we sequenced the immunoglobulin repertoire of immunized animals and superimposed validated single-cell-derived sequences using bioinformatics to reconstruct clonal trees.

This versatile approach dramatically expands the total available number of fully human, in vivo-generated antibodies against any therapeutic target.

Accelerating Therapeutic Antibody Discovery with Three Distinct Humanized Mouse Models

Qingcong Lin, PhD
Chief Executive Officer
Biocytogen Boston Corp.

Biocytogen has recently developed RenMab™ Mouse, which is a transgenic mouse with human germline Ig heavy chain and kappa light chain regions in lieu of those in the wild-type mouse, allowing for rapid generation of fully-human antibodies. Created with chromosome engineering technology, the RenMab™ Mouse has demonstrated no significant abnormality when compared to wild-type mice, with cell profiles, B-cell development, and immune repertoire all indistinguishable from normal. The RenMab™ Mouse has demonstrated robust immune responses to various antigens, subsequently producing antibody hits with strong functionalities, high antigen-specific affinities, and highly diverse sequences and epitopes.

To identify leads from the antibody hits derived from RenMab immunization, Biocytogen has created a catalog of target-humanized mouse models, allowing for researchers to conduct high throughput antibody hit screening. Lastly, to further select for candidates with best clinical translation potential, Biocytogen offers immune-cell humanized

mouse models for use in preclinical efficacy and toxicity evaluation. Combining the aforementioned three humanized mouse models, Biocytogen is soon to offer an integrated-technology platform to both generate and screen for therapeutic antibodies, accelerating the process from target validation to IND application.

Reaching the High-Hanging Fruit: Accessing Broad B cell Diversity to Select Better Lead Candidates in Under 1 Week

Anupam Singhal, PhD
Product Manager, Antibody Therapeutic
Berkeley Lights, Inc.

Traditional technologies are unable to screen the entire B cell repertoire. As a result, antibody therapies have only been developed against simple targets with limited success for more difficult targets such as GPCRs and ion channels. Plasma B Discovery on the Beacon® optofluidic system enables discovery of antibodies against more difficult targets by accessing broad B cell diversity to discover thousands of hits and down-select lead candidates in less than 1 week.