Specifica Hosts Webinar on Antibody Discovery in the Cloud
Specifica Hosts Webinar on Antibody Discovery in the Cloud
Specifica will host a webinar, organized by The Antibody Society, highlighting the company’s latest advances in antibody discovery and bioinformatics. The presentation, titled “Antibody Discovery in the Cloud: Using NGS to Expand the Universe of Selectable Antibodies,” will explore how next-generation sequencing and cloud-based analytical tools are transforming the antibody discovery process.
The webinar will be presented by Andrew Bradbury, Chief Scientific Officer of Specifica, and M. Frank Erasmus, Head of Bioinformatics at Specifica. The event will take place on January 21, 2021, at 12:00 p.m. Eastern Time. Attendance is free, and the webinar will run for approximately one hour.
Advances in antibody engineering have dramatically increased the ability of researchers to discover therapeutic antibodies with desirable properties. Specifica’s Generation 3 antibody discovery platform has been designed to maximize both antibody diversity and developability, generating between 500 and 5,000 unique antibody clonotypes against targets of interest. More than 80 percent of selected antibodies exhibit no measurable biophysical liabilities, while approximately 20 percent demonstrate subnanomolar binding affinities, making them attractive candidates for therapeutic development.
Traditionally, antibody selection from display libraries has relied on low-throughput random colony screening methods. While effective, these approaches often capture only a small fraction of the available diversity, potentially overlooking promising therapeutic candidates. This limitation becomes increasingly significant as antibody library diversity expands.
To address this challenge, Specifica incorporates next-generation sequencing (NGS) throughout its antibody discovery workflow. NGS is used both in the construction of antibody libraries and in the analysis of selection outputs, providing a far more comprehensive view of the available antibody repertoire.
Building on these capabilities, Specifica has developed a cloud-based software platform specifically designed for antibody engineers and bioinformaticians. The platform streamlines the identification and analysis of antibody leads while enabling researchers to explore a broader range of epitopes and binding characteristics. By leveraging advanced computational tools, users can more effectively identify candidates with diverse paratopes and broad epitope coverage.
According to Specifica, application of this platform to antibody selection outputs has increased the number of identified clonotype leads by five- to ten-fold compared with conventional random colony screening methods. This substantial increase expands the accessible antibody discovery space and improves the likelihood of identifying novel therapeutic candidates.
The webinar will provide attendees with insights into how the integration of next-generation sequencing, bioinformatics, and cloud computing is helping to accelerate antibody discovery and unlock new opportunities for therapeutic development.