Absolute Antibody Ltd - Next generation antibodies for research and diagnosis

Antibodies are outstanding tools for biomedical research and essential components of a
myriad of diagnostic tests. They are also the largest and fastest growing source of new drugs
with 39 approved to date and hundreds more in the pipeline. The vast majority of therapeutic
antibodies are made using recombinant DNA technology, which has enabled the engineering
of specific functions and the reduction or elimination of undesirable side-effects. However,
protein engineering has largely been ignored during the development of antibodies for
research and diagnosis, where most are still made by immunising goats or rabbits
("polyclonal" antibodies) or by the hybrid myeloma technique invented by Kohler and
Milstein in 1975 ("monoclonal" antibodies). Engineered antibodies could have many benefits,
bringing new specificities, simpler assay protocols and reduced "noise", to allow more reliable
and more reproducible tests.
Our plan is to develop an efficient method to quickly sequence desired antibodies and
transiently express them in a reproducible fashion to make economical and powerful reagents
for the research market.
This proof-of-concept project will develop the platform technologies necessary to move into
routine production. Looking further ahead, we anticipate that these