Engineered antibodies accelerating drug discovery and development

This meeting, organized by the Strategic Research Institute, reviewed advances in both engineering technologies and clinical development of antibody products. A panel of speakers, mainly from the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries, covered several important issues in the development of antibody therapeutics, including new display technologies, human antibody generation, high-level expression of antibodies in both mammalian cells and in transgenic plants, and the latest data from ongoing clinical trials of antibody products. In the case of human antibody generation, Abgenix Inc's XenoMax technology combines the powers of the transgenic XenoMouse and in vitro B cell culture and selection to enable the robust identification of antibodies with rare properties and very high affinity. MAbstract from Crucell NV provides a unique approach to the identification of human antibodies directed against tumor-specific glycosylation variants and activation epitopes of otherwise normal cellular molecules. Regarding antibody production, the use of transgenic plants is gaining more interest among biopharmaceutical industrials. Promising results were also reported on several antibody-based therapeutic, including antibody-drug conjugates and prodrugs.