First major milestone in AbVance project met, reports alliance

A not-for-profit alliance focusing on innovation in life sciences R&D, the Pistoia Alliance, has reached the first key milestone in its AbVance project with the first release of antibody structures into the European Bioinformatics Institute’s (EMBL-EBI) Protein Data Bank (PDB).

The AbVance project, aimed at accelerating biologics drug discovery by increasing knowledge of antibody structures in the public domain, will increase researchers’ predictive power and ability to accurately model antibody structures, thus reducing costs and time associated with generating experimental data to support decision-making in drug projects.

“Humans are capable of producing 10 billion distinct Ab molecules, and currently there are only about 3,000 Ab structures in the public domain. Thus, considerable gaps still exist in our structural understanding of a typical human Ab repertoire,” commented Dr Richard Norman, project manager. “This data is fundamental in drug discovery and we need to close this gap in our knowledge, which is why the Pistoia Alliance AbVance Project is of particular importance.”

“Our efforts in this space, like all of the projects we undertake, aim to make life easier for the whole life science sector — from academia, to research, to commercial settings. We now require wide participation from pharmaceutical and biotech organisations,” explained Dr Steve Arlington, president, The Pistoia Alliance. “This will not only amplify research budgets by pooling knowledge, but will advance Ab modelling throughout the industry, and ultimately have an impact on drug discovery. We need more structures in the public domain, and this will only be achieved by a greater willingness to share data between and within organisations.”

The 12 antibody structures that have been released into the PDB marks an important step in the project. Analysis of data has shown that even in cases where the structures released are similar to those already available in the PDB, some subtle differences exist that could prove vital for research.

Furthermore, the AbVance project team have identified a further set of antibody structures and is actively encouraging other organisations to become involved in support of the next release of data which is anticipated in the first quarter of 2018.