TAS::75 0849::TAS DEVELOPMENT OF ALTERNATIVE AFFINITY CAPTURE REAGENTS FOR CANCE

Nectagen, Inc., Lawrence KS

Investigators

Abstract

Many of the antibodies produced for cancer research are poorly characterized, exhibit suboptimal affinity or selectivity, and are time-consuming and expensive to produce. Alternative affinity capture reagents are therefore needed as reproducible, highly characterized, rapid, and cost-effective substitutes for monoclonal antibodies. As a platform for creating affinity capture reagents, Aptakon has developed a 10 kD protein scaffold with loops similar to the complementarity determining region of the immunoglobulin domain. Aptakon aims to construct plasmid and phagemid libraries of variant scaffolds;to demonstrate the feasibility of using established phage and/or bacteria display methods to isolate variant scaffolds with high affinity and selectivity against 10 test proteins;and to determine the performance, cost-effectiveness and time requirements for large-scale production of affinity capture reagents. The anticipated results of this research include affinity capture reagents for 10 cancer-related proteins and data on their relative performance and cost. The technology has the potential to enable the rapid, large scale production of high performance, low cost alternative affinity capture reagents to compete in the $1 billion research antibody market. These new products have the potential to increase the productivity of researchers and thereby accelerate the development of drugs and diagnostic tests for cancer.