Antiverse and GlobalBio Inc. extend collaboration

AI specialist Antiverse Ltd (Cardiff, UK) and antobody engeeniering expert GlobalBio, Inc. (New York, USA) will be extending their collaboration to advance immune checkpoint inhibitors in cancer therapy. The initial collaboration successfully resulted in the generation of a panel of anti-PD-1 antibodies with diverse binding and functional profiles, with two candidates from this panel now entering preclinical development.

The collaboration leveraged Antiverse’s proprietary AI-driven Antibody Discovery platform, which uses state-of-the-art machine learning techniques and advanced cell line engineering to develop antibodies for difficult drug targets, alongside GlobalBio’s ALTHEA semisynthetic libraries for the discovery and optimisation of antibody-based therapeutics.

Through rounds of selection using recombinant human PD-1 as a selector, more than 300 clones were tested for their ability to bind human PD-1 and PD-1 orthologs of mouse, dog and cynomolgus monkeys. Among these clones, over a hundred were demonstrated to be positive binders to PD-1, with several dozen showing high specificity for human PD-1 and/or cross-reactivity with mouse, dog and cynomolgus orthologs. The best-performing clones were converted to antibody isotypes to minimizse toxicity. 

Several antibodies exhibited the ability to block PD-1:PD-L1 and PD-1:PD-L2 interactions in ELISA assays and Jurkat cells, and some promoted expression of Interferon-gamma in a mixed lymphocyte reaction co-culture assay. Antibodies D6, highly specific for human PD-1, and D13, cross-reactive with dog PD-1 and related variants, are now progressing to preclinical development in an extension of the collaboration.