Integral Molecular announces the development of Humanized Chicken Antibody Technology (hCAT) and the incorporation of hCAT into the company’s industry-leading MPS antibody discovery platform for multipass membrane proteins. The innovation of hCAT lies in the ability to isolate fully humanized antibodies directly from immunized animals, reducing the time and effort needed for antibody discovery.
The MPS platform uses chickens as a source of antibodies to unlock difficult drug targets that have been inaccessible using conventional animal hosts, such as mice and rabbits. hCAT enables the isolation of antibodies that are already fully humanized and bind with high (picomolar) affinity. This streamlines the antibody discovery process and reduces the need for downstream engineering. Antibodies isolated using hCAT in many cases are more human (i.e. germline human) than antibodies isolated directly from humans.
“Antibody humanization and engineering are often necessary for the development of therapeutic antibodies but can be incredibly time consuming,” said Ross Chambers, Vice President of Antibody Discovery at Integral Molecular. “Our hCAT technology now allows us to harness the robust immune response of chickens and to isolate, humanize, and affinity-mature those antibodies all in one step.”
Integral Molecular unveiled Humanized Chicken Antibody Technology at the PEGS Protein Engineering and Cell Therapy Summit, which debuted the use of hCAT to discover high-affinity lead antibodies against oncology targets Claudin 6 and Claudin 18.2.