AI-Driven Solutions For Therapeutic Antibody Development
Capitalizing on artificial intelligence to accelerate the development of therapeutic antibodies — drugs of the future.
MAbSilico, young French Deeptech start-up located in Tours area, has just been attributed a grant of one million euros in the Bpifrance I-Nov competition. This rewards its software, which uses artificial intelligence and numeric simulation to guide therapeutic antibody discovery, reducing the risk of failure and the time during the development of these drug candidates before clinical tests. A revolution in the bio-drugs development process. The MAbSilico project was running in the « Health – bioproduction » track of the call, dedicated to supporting an innovative sector in the manufacturing of biological macromolecules using disruptive technologies. This financing will allow MAbSilico to recruit new collaborators and accelerate the time to market of its innovative solutions.
Bpifrance i-Nov ; continuous state support for disruptive technologies
I-Nov call of the Bpifrance, French Public Investment Bank, responds to the government’s desire to make France a leading country in the creation and development of innovative companies, especially stemming from cutting-edge French scientific research and having a high technological content.
I-nov supports innovation projects having a high potential for French economy, carried by start-ups and SME, to foster the emergence of companies that are leaders in their fields, and that can qualify for international stature. The « Health – bioproduction » track of the call, in conjunction with the strategic committee of the health industry sector, deals with one of the key-challenges identified: the production of bio-drugs. The call requested projects responding to the industrialization potential of biological molecules. That’s what MAbSilico has done with its proposition of simulation and artificial intelligence technologies to co-design the product and its manufacturing process.
MAbSilico ; laureate of the « Health – bioproduction » I-Nov call
By leveraging this one million grant, MAbSilico will accelerate the launch of its technological solutions for the conception of therapeutic antibodies optimized for bioproduction. One of the major difficulties in the manufacturing of biomolecules (molecules that are produced in biological reactors, and not through chemical processes) is to reach industrial production yields. Designed using big-data analysis combined to artificial intelligence approaches, MAbSilico’s technology addresses this challenge, and at the same time accelerates selection, characterization and optimization steps. In the end, a drug candidate can be proposed in a few weeks, as opposed to two to three years using traditional techniques.
Vincent Puard, CEO of MAbSilico, stated: “Accelerating the development of therapeutic antibodies is essential for the rapid availability of new treatments to patients, while reducing their development costs. This goes through reducing the failure ratio, which is more than 90% today. We thank the actors who accompanied us in this project, INRA, CNRS, The Loire-Valley Region, Tours University, ABF Decisions, MabDesign, the Labex MAbImprove and Brainsventure. This will allow MAbSilico to take a new step forward by strengthening its team, offering a complete software suite to our clients, and to participate to the emergence of a biotech ecosystem in the Loire Valley.”
New hires are planned within the framework of this R&D project — software developers, bioinformaticians and biologists — who will reinforce MAbSilico commercial proposal through a « SaaS » software, currently under development.
This SaaS (Software as a Service) will be composed of various modules, some of which are already commercialized, for therapeutic target identification, selection of an antibody candidate, its biological characterization, its maturation, and its formatting for bioproduction.
In addition to this prize awarded by Bpifrance, MAbSilico is looking forward to solidifying its financial assets through an ongoing fundraising campaign, for an amount of one million euros. This will allow MAbSilico to complete the design of the SaaS and to increase its commercial capacities in Europe.
About MAbSilico
MAbSilico is a deeptech company, founded in September 2017, which implements computational solutions for the development of therapeutic antibodies, bio-drugs used in an increasing number of pathologies, including oncology.
MAbSilico’s objective is to propose a software suite that creates a formal approach of antibody development, reducing the risks of failure and the duration of pre-clinical steps, as well as strengthening intellectual protection. Conventional approaches for the discovery and pre-clinical development take two to three years, MabSilico technologies allow shrinking this time to a few weeks.
The technology developed by MAbSilico is the result of more than twenty years of French scientific research, in laboratories affiliated to INRA and CNRS. It is based on artificial intelligence, machine learning, and has partly been funded by the Loire-Valley Region and the MAbImprove Labex. MAbSilico tools have been the subjects of more than ten scientific publications and are covered by an international patent.
The MAbSilico team consists in five persons, including three co-funders and co-inventors of the methods. It is located on the INRA Loire-Valley site.
Since 2018, MAbSilico has been commercializing its tools in France, Europe and USA, with more than 20 clients: academics, startups and biotechs.
MAbSilico is looking forward to extend its commercial effort in Europe and to hire ten persons in Tours for positions in software development, data science, bioinformatics, biology and business development. The implementation of our solutions will be made in close link with our clients to best meet their needs.
More information : www.mabsilico.com
Contact: contact@mabsilico.com