HuTARG™ Technology Delivers High Affinity Fully Human Antibody Therapeutics
February 18, 2014
Burnaby, B.C., Canada. Feb 18th, 2014. – Innovative Targeting Solutions Inc. (ITS) a pioneer in novel protein engineering technologies, today announced the successful application of the company’s proprietary affinity maturation technology for the purposes of generating antibodies with pM affinities. These first in class antibodies are unique in that all mutations are specifically targeted to CDRs, unlike error prone PCR, somatic hypermutation or other traditional mutagenesis approaches, leaving the antibody frameworks in germline configuration. Because the diversity is generated de novo, in vitro, by the HuTARG cell line itself, there are no manipulations of large recombinant libraries nor challenges due to the lower transformation rates of mammalian cells. The HuTARG technology coupled with Fluorescence Activated Cell Sorting (FACS) allows for the straight forward isolation of antibodies with ten up to several hundred fold increases in affinity in a single FACS run and over a thousand fold increase in affinity in two rounds of CDR optimization. In addition, the HuTARG Technology avoids the loss of time and labour involved in reformatting; as a mammalian platform it allows for the simultaneous selection of high expressing antibodies and does not advance antibodies with mutations that would only later be discovered to have adversely affected manufacturability.
“Our generation of subnanomolar affinity antibodies is the last critical set of data validating the HuTARG technology. The technology not only generates large repertoires of fully human antibodies but can also be used to precisely target mutations to generate antibodies with improved characteristics. We anticipate that 2014 will be a transforming year for the company; we are in late stage discussions with several pharmaceutical companies interested in internalizing our HuTARG technology , we have a paradigm shifting solution for generating high quality protein based therapeutics, and a novel first-in-class drug candidate in early development.” –Michael Gallo, President, Innovative Targeting Solutions Inc.
About Innovative Targeting Solutions Inc.
Founded in 2008, Innovative Targeting Solutions Inc. is a privately‐held company that has developed the HuTARG technology, a next generation protein engineering platform for the generation and maturation of fully human antibody therapeutics. The HuTARG technology is a fully mammalian technology that generates antibody diversity in vitro via RAG1/RAG2 mediated V(D)J recombination. For more information please visit www.innovativetargeting.com
Contact:
Paul Kang
Tel: 604|433-6779
Email: pkang@itsas01.azurewebsites.net