SAN DIEGO, Sept. 30 (UPI) -- A California company's contract to develop antibodies for bio-defense has been extended by the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
AnaptysBio, Inc., a privately held therapeutic antibody company, said its work on high-affinity thermally stable antibodies follows successful completion of development milestones during the first year of the contract to generate antibodies that could be used in antibody-based bio-sensors to detect bio-terror threats.
"We are pleased to extend our contractual relationship with DARPA," said James Topper, executive chairman of AnaptysBio. "The milestones achieved under this project demonstrate our ability to simultaneously optimize Abs for affinity and thermal stability."
AnaptysBio's proprietary SHM-XEL platform uniquely permits optimization of multiple properties, including thermal stability, expression, cross-reactivity and functional activity, in parallel with affinity improvement using the natural process of somatic hypermutation.
Aside from bio-defense applications, SHM-XEL is useful in improving the convenience and shelf-life of therapeutic antibodies through increased thermal stability.
