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IridescentBio has launched its cloud-based platform for antibody developability. The platform is designed to help researchers predict the biophysical properties of antibodies based on their molecular structure enabling them to make more informed decisions about which antibodies to pursue in the laboratory.
Much of the field of biopharma involves engineering antibodies for specific targets that nature has not yet designed antibodies for. Antibodies are proteins that play a critical role in the immune system, helping to fight off infections from viruses and bacteria. Scientists able to work with them can harness their abilities to target and kill off bad cells, such as cancer cells, or cells with the wrong structure. The understanding of how different engineering approaches to antibodies is critical to combatting many of the world’s new, and old health risks.
A key challenge facing this important field, is the capacity to predict the developability of a particular antibody - which is precisely what IridescentBio’s platform addresses. Developability refers to the biophysical properties of an antibody, such as how it behaves under different conditions, how stable it is, and how it interacts with other proteins/biostructures, and how readily it can be placed into a biologic-drug formulation. Predicting these properties can help researchers save time and money by focusing on the most promising candidates.
The platform is also designed to be user-friendly and accessible to non-experts in computational physics or chemistry, it addresses laboratory scientists as a user-base, and requires no computational modelling expertise or experience. It provides a report within an hour, giving researchers a developability profile for the antibody, and covers both patented and new antibody sequences, allowing researchers to compare and contrast the developability of different sequences.
IridescentBio was founded by a team of physics and chemistry experts who were inspired by the recent revolution in antibody engineering that opened up the potential for new (bio)molecular therapies in humans. The team, led by co-founders Johannes Fraaije and Nicholas Tito, includes Nick Benson as Sales Director, and Andre Nunes, the Chief Software Engineer based in Portugal. The company has partnered with AnkerCloud for back-end development and Studio Projectie in Leiden, Netherlands, for front-end development.
The biopharma industry employs not only antibodies, but other biomolecules as therapeutics, such as RNA and DNA drugs - it has seen significant growth in recent years. The industry is currently seeing a compound annual growth rate of 13%, as technology has advanced and the industry has learned how to upscale the technology for commercial use.
IridescentBio's platform is a valuable tool for researchers in biopharma, allowing them to form more informed decisions about which antibodies to pursue in the laboratory. The company is excited to contribute to the advancement of this rapidly growing field and help improve human health.