Antibody Discovery and Optimization Platform

We have developed a proprietary antibody discovery and optimization platform that screens for antibodies with strong agonist activities, characterizes antibodies with enhanced binding affinity and stability, constructs antibodies specifically activated in the tumor environment, and design multi-specific antibodies with enhanced scFv stability.

• Agonist antibody screen technology: To screen antibodies with strong agonist activity, we have developed and optimized the reporter system with high sensitivity and throughput. Using this system, we can select differentiated antibodies with low binding affinity and high biological activity. Based on the antibody screen technology, we discovered MIL97, an anti-CD40 antibody with a unique epitope, high agonist activity and mediated affinity. We then used our multi-specific antibody platform to further develop this antibody with high efficiency and low toxicity. 

• Optimized phage display antibody screen technology: To discover antibodies with high affinity, we have developed an optimized phage display screening system in which the candidate antibodies are displayed and screened by cell-based panning. We then utilize our ADCC-enhanced antibody platform to increase interaction between antibody and NK cells.

• Tumor microenvironment activated antibody technology: We are able to generate an antibody that is activated specifically in tumor microenvironment. The antibody is covered by masking peptide and thus inactive in normal tissues, which reduces on target but off-tumor toxicity. When entering into tumor microenvironment, the masking peptide is cleaved from the antibody, resulting in the exposure and activation of the antibody.

• scFv stability enhancement technology: Through our proprietary computational algorithms, we are able to identify the critical amino acids that affect the structural stability and affinity of the antigen/antibody complex. With the aid of this computational structure modeling, we can create universal scFv mutations engineered with enhanced stability. F