Adcentrx and AvantGen Enter a New Partnership with a Three-year, Multi-target Collaboration to Discover Antibodies for Novel Antibody-drug Conjugates

Adcentrx and AvantGen Enter a New Partnership with a Three-year, Multi-target Collaboration to Discover Antibodies for Novel Antibody-drug Conjugates

SAN DIEGO, Feb. 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — Adcentrx Therapeutics (“Adcentrx”), a biotechnology company focused on accelerating breakthroughs in antibody drug conjugate (“ADC”) therapeutic development, and AvantGen, a leader in the use of yeast display technology for human antibody discovery and optimization, announced today a three-year, multi-target partnership for the discovery of antibodies to be developed into novel ADC therapeutic candidates.

Under the terms of the collaboration, Adcentrx will specify targets against which AvantGen will screen for novel antibodies using its yeast display system. Adcentrx will be responsible for engineering the antibodies into ADC therapeutic candidates and has worldwide development and commercialization rights. AvantGen will be eligible to receive milestone payments for achievement of certain development milestones.

“We are excited to enter this new partnership with AvantGen to accelerate our ADC development efforts,” said Hui Li, Ph.D., President and CEO of Adcentrx. “What attracted us to AvantGen initially is how their yeast display technology and human antibody libraries mimic human diversity to yield high affinity and very specific antibodies. Through our ongoing collaboration, AvantGen has demonstrated its capabilities in rapidly discovering a diverse antibody repertoire with high developability against defined targets. A key objective at Adcentrx, through this collaboration and opportunistic licensing activities, is to identify the best antibodies which we can leverage to assemble a pipeline of next generation ADC therapeutics.”

“We are proud to partner with Adcentrx to help accelerate its ADC pipeline build with our robust human antibody discovery platform,” said Xiaomin Fan, Ph.D., President and CEO of AvantGen. “The speed that Adcentrx is able to take lead antibody candidates to development stage with its ADC technology is truly remarkable. We believe that this new partnership will enable Adcentrx to develop the most promising next generation ADC therapeutics with our high-quality antibodies.”

About Adcentrx Therapeutics

Adcentrx is a biotechnology company focused on accelerating breakthroughs in protein conjugate therapeutic development for cancer and other life-threatening diseases. By combining the targeting precision of biologics and the disease fighting power of small molecule payloads, Adcentrx strives to develop next generation targeted therapies for improving patient treatment options.

For more information, please visit https://adcentrx.com.

About AvantGen

AvantGen, Inc is a leader in the use of yeast display technology for antibody discovery and optimization. Founded by experts in the creation of antibody discovery and optimization platforms, AvantGen excels in the rapid generation of antibodies for therapeutic, diagnostic and research tool applications. The Company’s platforms include a robust yeast display system, large natural human antibody database, fully human antibody libraries comprised of over 100 billion antibody clones displayed by yeast cells, NK cell engager technology, flow cytometry-based and other screening technologies, as well as novel methodologies for rabbit monoclonal antibody and VHH nanobody generation. These versatile platforms can be used to discover antibodies directed at specific disease targets, affinity mature existing antibodies to improve their binding properties and humanize antibodies to render non-human antibodies suitable for human therapeutic applications, as well as generate rabbit monoclonal antibodies for applications that need extremely high specificity, such as antibodies capable of distinguishing point mutations and post-translational modifications for IHC, and anti-idiotype antibodies for PK studies. AvantGen’s partners include pharmaceutical, biotech, diagnostic and government entities, many of which are repeat customers.

For more information, please visit www.avantgen.com.

Adcentrx Contact:
Andrew Hopkins, Vice President, Business Development
andrew.hopkins@adcentrx.com
Tel: 858-428-9505

AvantGen Contact:
Robin Dong, Director of Business Development
rdong@avantgen.com
Tel: 858-381-5214
Cell: 619-909-3805

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faq Want to learn more?

  • Why Yeast?

    Yeast, or Saccharomyces cerevisiae aka brewer’s yeast to be exact, has the best of both worlds as a model organism for drug discovery. In selecting the right model, two opposing factors are: 1) finding an organism that can be used cost-effectively and ethically, and 2) being physiologically relevant by having it as similar as humans, the intended patients. This is where yeast has all the advantages: 1) it is unicellular, grows incredibly fast at a doubling rate of 90 minutes, and is easy and safe (non-pathogenic) to culture, meanwhile 2) as a eukaryote it can properly express, fold, and glycosylate proteins such as antibodies similar to mammals.

  • Yeast is “similar” but not the same as in humans with regards to post-translation modification (PTM) of proteins such as glycosylation?

    Correct, there are slight differences in the PTM profiles of proteins expressed in yeast versus mammals. However, we recombinantly express our lead antibodies in HEK293 or CHO cells and rarely observe a loss in activity. This is in stark contrast with E. coli-based systems like phage or cell-free, where bacteria lack protein glycosylation machinery.

  • Is affinity maturation required after using one of your platforms?

    Due to our large size rationally-designed Germliner™ library collection coupled with our rapid cell sorting based screening, we consistently obtain single-digit and subnM affinity antibodies with optimal developable characteristics. Interestingly, our popular AvantGeneer affinity maturation platform has been frequently used to optimize client antibodies that were originally discovered with hybridoma and human transgenic mouse platforms.

  • My target is a GPCR. Will your platform work?

    We have had success with multi-transmembrane proteins such as GPCRs, by using virus-like-particles (VLPs), nanodiscs, and client-designed variants with increased solubility.

  • What materials should I provide?

    We typically use various amounts of biotinylated, DyLight™ 650 conjugated, and unlabeled antigens for all projects. It’s important that both labeled and unlabeled antigens are QC’ed by provider, third party, and/or AvantGen. >0.5 mg/mL concentration, >80% monomer percentage, and >90% purity. Preferred buffer is PBS and no tris-based buffers please.

    Estimated Material Amounts*

    Application Stage Discovery Affinity Maturation Rabbit mAb
    All stages 1.5-2 mg biotinylated or 2-3 mg unlabeled 0.5 mg biotinylated or 1 mg unlabeled 2 mg unlabeled and 1 mg biotinylated
    FACS and screening 0.5-1 mg biotinylated or 1-2 mg unlabeled 0.2-0.5 mg biotinylated or 0.5-1 mg unlabeled 1 mg biotinylated and 0.2 mg unlabeled
    Screening only 0.2 mg biotinylated or 0.2-0.5 mg unlabeled 0.2 mg biotinylated or 0.2-0.5 mg unlabeled 0.2-0.5 mg unlabeled

    *Assuming 50 kDa antigen. AvantGen can bioconjugate and QC as needed.

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