MAB Discovery expands 2013 partnership with BioNTech AG

MAB Discovery will use its rabbit-based antibody discovery platform to generate novel antibody therapeutics against undisclosed targets provided by BioNTech. Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed. BioNtech recently partnered with Genentech to develop personalised RNA-based cancer vaccines.

MAB Discovery delivers high quality, functional monoclonal antibodies via sophisticated, high-throughput selection of B cells generated by immunisation, and delivers a vast number of high quality candidates with regard to potency and epitope coverage. The use of wild type rabbits for immunisation and the functional B-cell cloning strategy of MAB Discovery suits not only classical target proteins and receptors, but also to a wide variety of more challenging immunogens, e.g. GPCRs, ion channels, carbohydrates, and small sized epitopes. 

The immune system of rabbits differs from that of mice or humans in that it produces a diverse number of high-affinity antibodies in response to almost any antigen. An additional advantage is the animals’ size -unlike mice, rabbits are big enough for multiple blood samples to be taken over time, allowing the exploration of mAbs at different stages of maturation and capturing the full diversity of the immune response to cover all possible epitopes. 

BioNTech is a provider of individualised mRNA-based medicines, chimeric antigen receptors and T-cell receptor-based products and next-generation checkpoint immunomodulators.