Gilead, AbCellera in Therapeutic Antibody Discovery Collaboration

On June 13, 2019, AbCellera, a company focused on therapeutic antibody discovery from natural immune systems, announced it has entered into an agreement with Gilead Sciences to support the discovery of therapeutic antibody candidates for infectious diseases.

AbCellera will apply its expertise in single-cell screening of natural immune sources to generate panels of antibody candidates for Gilead to evaluate. Under the agreement, AbCellera will receive upfront and research payments and is eligible to receive downstream clinical and commercial milestone payments and royalties on net sales of products.

AbCellera reports that its team can interrogate millions of single B cells in a campaign, an approach that has proven successful in identifying low-frequency subsets of antibodies among large and diverse panels of binders. In this collaboration, AbCellera will be looking for ultra-rare antibodies with specific properties defined by Gilead.

Over the past three years, AbCellera has successfully completed more than 30 antibody discovery programs, including deals with seven global pharmaceutical companies and biotech companies. AbCellera states that it enables programs for any target class, including difficult multi-pass membrane proteins.

Source: AbCellera