Webinar Description:

Biologics, including CAR-T and other cell and gene therapies, are the fastest growing class of therapeutics products in the world, but face a number of challenges in their discovery and development, such as increased competition, long development timelines, and costly – and complex – manufacturing processes. Taking a rational, systematic and biology-led approach to candidate identification and validation, coupled to detailed mechanism of action studies in disease relevant cell models in the discovery phase can prove invaluable to increasing the chances of clinical success further down the line. There are a number of technologies available to advance the discovery of novel biologics from CRISPR screening to identify novel promoters and AAV capsids for AAV based gene therapies, to gene editing to recreate complex models of disease. In this webinar, we focus particularly on antibody discovery using novel SLIM mammalian display technology. SLIM display allows for the identification of antibodies against membrane proteins in their native configuration by expressing a target membrane protein alongside a highly diverse scFv library in the same mammalian cells. These cells are progressed through multiple rounds of enrichment and purification to obtain single clones expressing unique scFv’s that bind the target antigen. The technology uses Chinese hamster ovary cells throughout discovery, to improve the likelihood that binders will be compatible with downstream processing and production.

Dr Nancy Lopez-Anton, Senior Scientist in OXGENE’s Antibody Discovery team, will take a deep dive into the data behind this technology, showcasing its application in antibody discovery, where we discovered novel, functional antibodies against EpCAM, and affinity maturation, where we found an improved, functional binder to a GPCR protein.

Learning Objectives:

• Understand the key issues in antibody discovery that can be addressed with SLIM display technology
• Learn how novel SLIM mammalian display technology can be used to discover antibodies/scFv’s against membrane proteins in their native configuration
• Learn how SLIM mammalian display technology can be used for affinity maturation against intractable membrane proteins like GPCRs

Speakers:

Alexander Kelly
Business Development Manager, Discovery technologies
OXGENE

Alex trained as a pharmacologist at the University of Manchester, UK and has worked in business development for the last 7 years, primaily focusing on drug discovery technologies in the biologics field in both European and U.S markets.

Dr Nancy Lopez-Anton
Senior Scientist, Antibody Discovery
OXGENE

Nancy gained a Degree in Pharmacy and a Masters in the Management of Scientific Departments in the Pharmaceutical Industry at the University of Barcelona, Spain. She obtained her PhD in Pharmaceutical Biology at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Germany. Prior to joining Oxford Genetics in 2018, Nancy worked on the development of magnetic beads-based diagnostic kits at Biokit and as project leader in Oryzon Genomics.

Cost: No Cost!