200+ recombinant antibodies to be engineered into new formats to advance research
200+ recombinant antibodies to be engineered into new formats to advance research
Redcar, UK, December 3, 2019. Absolute Antibody Ltd., an industry-leading provider of recombinant antibody products and services, today announced a partnership with the Recombinant Antibody Network (RAN), a consortium of three expert centers at the University of Chicago, University of Toronto, and UC San Francisco (UCSF) with a common goal to generate recombinant antibodies at a proteome-wide scale. Under the new partnership, select recombinant antibodies made by the Recombinant Antibody Network will be engineered into new formats and made available to a wider scientific audience via Absolute Antibody’s online reagents catalog.
The sequences and validation data for more than 200 antibodies directed to intracellular targets generated by the Recombinant Antibody Network have been licensed to Absolute Antibody by the University of Chicago’s Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation on behalf of the RAN. The collection includes antibodies against key transcription- and translation-regulating proteins, such as chromobox and bromodomain proteins, and other targets involved in important areas of biology research, including chromatin biology and infectious disease control. Absolute Antibody will use the sequences and data to recombinantly produce the antibodies in a variety of engineered formats designed to enable new experimental possibilities.
The engineered recombinant antibodies will be added to Absolute Antibody’s online reagents catalog, where researchers worldwide can easily access them. They will be offered in different species to readily enable co-labelling studies and in antibody fragment formats to reduce background in immunoprecipitation studies. All the antibodies are defined at the amino acid level to ensure batch-to-batch reproducibility, high purity and low endotoxin levels.
“We’re excited to partner with the Recombinant Antibody Network, which has been visionary in its efforts to generate a comprehensive set of recombinant antibodies for biomedical research,” said Amelia Gibson, PhD, MBA, director of business development at Absolute Antibody. “The Network shares our mission to further the availability of recombinant antibodies to advance scientific research, and we’re eager to bring this valuable collection of antibodies to a wider audience in newly engineered formats.”
To address the unmet need for an efficient pipeline for renewable antibody discovery, Anthony Kossiakoff, PhD, Otho S.A. Sprague professor of biochemistry and molecular biophysics at the University of Chicago, co-founded the RAN with two other veterans from the former Protein Engineering Department at Genentech Inc. Sachdev Sidhu, PhD, now a professor of molecular genetics at the University of Toronto, and James Wells, PhD, professor of pharmaceutical chemistry in the UCSF School of Pharmacy, teamed with Kossiakoff to make automated, large-scale antibody production a reality. The RAN generates high quality non-animal derived recombinant antibodies from cloned synthetic genes that are selected for high performance.
“Our new partnership with Absolute Antibody significantly extends the reach of the recombinant antibodies developed at our three university sites,” said Kossiakoff. “Our consortium is committed to generating and validating functional antibodies for protein targets across the human proteome, and by partnering with Absolute Antibody, these antibodies will reach scientists worldwide for use in new applications, to further their contribution to scientific progress.”
Over the coming months, the recombinant antibodies will be added to Absolute Antibody’s reagents catalog here.
About Absolute Antibody, Ltd.
Absolute Antibody is a rapidly growing company with a vision to make recombinant antibody technology accessible to all. We offer antibody sequencing, engineering and recombinant production as custom services, as well as a unique catalog of recombinant antibodies, engineered into new and useful formats. Learn more at: www.absoluteantibody.com.
About the University of Chicago and the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation
As one of the world’s premier research universities, the University of Chicago empowers students and scholars through its commitment to free and open inquiry. Across numerous departments and disciplines, as well as more than 140 institutes and centers, the UChicago community advances ideas and innovations that enrich human life. UChicago’s faculty are some of the top in the world. The University of Chicago has 89 Nobel Prize winners, including 6 current faculty, and receives more than $450 million in sponsored research awards each year. Learn more at: www.uchicago.edu.
The Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation bridges the gap between knowledge and practice, idea and action, and research and impact through education, partnerships, and new venture creation. The Polsky Center represents the University of Chicago in its commercial transactions with the RAN and led the negotiation of the partnership with Absolute Antibody. Learn more at: polsky.uchicago.edu.
About UC San Francisco
The University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) is exclusively focused on the health sciences and is dedicated to promoting health worldwide through advanced biomedical research, graduate-level education in the life sciences and health professions, and excellence in patient care. UCSF Health, which serves as UCSF’s primary academic medical center, includes top-ranked specialty hospitals and other clinical programs, and has affiliations throughout the Bay Area. Learn more at https://www.ucsf.edu, or see our Fact Sheet.
UCSF Innovation Ventures represents UCSF in its commercial transactions with the RAN.
About the University of Toronto
Founded in 1827, the University of Toronto is Canada’s leading institution of learning, discovery and knowledge creation. U of T is one of the world’s top research-intensive universities, driven to invent and innovate. It is also one of the top five universities in the world for its start-up incubator programs. In the last 10 years, the U of T entrepreneurship community has created over 500 companies and raised over $1.5 billion in investment capital. Learn more at: www.utoronto.ca.
About the Recombinant Antibody Network
The Recombinant Antibody Network (RAN) is a consortium of highly integrated technology centers at UCSF, the University of Chicago, and the University of Toronto, unified under a common goal to generate reliable high quality recombinant antibody (rAb) reagents at a proteome wide scale for biology and biomedicine. Learn more at: www.recombinant-
