EMBL, Abnova partner on MAb production
with a Taiwanese company Abnova, to develop a high-throughput
system for making monoclonal antibodies (MAbs).
Abnova is active in the industrial-scale, high-throughput production of recombinant proteins and antibodies, and the new collaboration will see it adapt its technologies to create a new automated platform for MAb production, with the help of the EMBL.
MAbs have already transformed the therapeutics marketplace, and the number of antibody-base new drugs reaching the market is rising year after year. But they are also valuable research tools, and one emerging area is their use as reagents on microarrays to carry out protein expression studies.
Dr Martin Raditsch, deputy managing director at EMBL Enterprise Management (EMBLEM), said: "high throughput monoclonal antibody technology has significant impact on the progress in proteomic research."
He added that the agreement with Abnova would couple EMBL's research with the large-scale, commercialisation capabilities of Abnova, improving the quality, speed, and cost of product offerings compared to what either company could achieve alone.
Under the terms of agreement, EMBL's adjunctive technologies relating to automated platform and monoclonal antibody production, developed at its Monoclonal Core Facility in Monterotondo, Italy, will be developed using Abnova's in-house capability and infrastructure.
The partnership also provides a framework for a marketing collaboration between EMBLEM and Abnova for the custom monoclonal antibody manufacturing sector.
To this end, a subsidiary of Abnova in Germany, Abnova GmbH, has been formed to consolidate and expand the company's custom service to meet the large-scale antibody needs of the academic and industrial communities worldwide.
