A novel approach using VLP's to enhance the immunogenicity of peptides for generation of therapeutic Monoclonal antibodies.

The global market for therapeutic monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) has become the fastest
growing segment of the pharmaceutical industry. The antigen is the lynchpin of therapeutic
mAb development, so understanding, controlling and engineering antigens to increase
immunogenicity is of vital interest to the pharmaceutical and diagnostic industry. Despite the
success so far, up to 25% of all candidate antigens fail to elicit an immune response and thus
cannot yield effective mAbs. The failure rate is particularly high in the cancer market, where
the key antigens are naturally modified by glycosylation in a manner not achievable using
current antigen production technology.
To overcome this key limitation, we propose to take a novel approach which would display
peptides genetically linked to the surface of enveloped virus like particles. This would lead to
the peptide of interest mirroring its native glycosylation state to deliver a high degree of
specificity, markedly increasing the affinity of the resultant antibody to the native protein.
This will allow the generation of optimised mAbs, generating novel therapeutics against
previously impossible targets.
Following a successful proof of concept, the technology platform will initially be focused
toward antigens to be used in production of mAbs for cancer therapy and then to candidate
viral antigens such as HIV and CMV, where vaccine development has proved notoriously
difficult.