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AbCellera Presents Data on T Cell Engager Platform at AACR 2022
VANCOUVER, British Columbia--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- AbCellera (Nasdaq: ABCL), a technology company focused on next-generation antibody discovery, today announced
About this update from Abcellera Biologics Inc.
[{"type":"text","content":" VANCOUVER, British Columbia--(BUSINESS WIRE)--\nAbCellera (Nasdaq: ABCL), a technology company focused on next-generation antibody discovery, today announced the release of data on its new T cell engager platform at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) 2022 Annual Meeting. AbCellera’s poster presentation describes the discovery, characterization, and validation of a diverse panel of CD3-binding antibodies that can be used to develop bispecific CD3 T cell engagers for new cancer treatments.\n\n“T cell engagers are widely recognized for their tremendous potential as precision oncology therapeutics. However, a limited pool of available CD3-binding antibodies and technological challenges in engineering bispecifics have hindered development, leading to many first-generation molecules with poor efficacy or safety,” said Bo Barnhart, Ph.D., VP, Translational Research at AbCellera. “Our discovery engine has allowed us to build a panel of hundreds of diverse and fully human CD3-binding antibodies. Combined with our OrthoMabTM bispecific platform, this enables rapid screening of many combinations of CD3- and tumor antigen-binding antibodies to find pairs with optimal biological function and good developability.”\n\nCD3 T cell engagers, which bind to T cells and cancer cells simultaneously, are able to redirect T cells to tumor cells, regardless of T cell specificity. Two different parental antibodies, a CD3-targeting antibody that fine-tunes T cell activation and a tumor-targeting antibody with high specificity for cancer cells, are needed to create an optimal bispecific T cell engager. Highly diverse panels of developable and functionally validated parental antibodies increase the probability of finding effective and manufacturable CD3 T cell engagers and reduce the need for downstream engineering to eliminate liabilities.\n\nAbCellera used its technology stack to discover a panel of CD3-binding antibodies from humanized mice. Bioinformatic analysis revealed high sequence diversity, including somatic hypermutation, a range of CDR3 lengths, and diverse V gene usage. The panel was also found to be functionally diverse, including a broad range of CD3 affinities and T cell activation potencies. Biophysical characterization demonstrated that AbCellera’s CD3-binding antibodies have favorable developability properties, which may...