Domantis granted patent, rights on new antibody selection technique

UK-based Domantis, a developer of single-domain antibody therapeutics, has been granted a US patent on a new emulsion technique for selecting antibodies and antibody fragment.

Domantis, which is 30 per cent owned by Sydney biotech company Peptech, has been licensed exclusive rights to the technology by the UK Medical Research Council.

In a statement, Domantis said the new emulsion technology offered "significant advantages" over current antibody-selection techniques.

Domantis said it enabled researchers to sift a large pool of genes for those specifying high-affinity antibodies to a designated antigen, or to T-cell receptors.

Conventionally, monoclonal antibodies have been produced by injecting antigens into animals, then isolating those B-cells that make high-affinity antibodies. The genetic 'recipes' for these antibodies are then recovered from the cloned B-cells.

In a revolutionary technique called phage-display antibody technology, developed in the early 1990s, human antibody genes are expressed in specialised viruses, called bacteriophages.

The phages are engineered to take up human antibody genes at random, and 'display' the antibodies at one end of their rod-like particles. The antibody, still attached to the original phage containing its recipe, is then fished out of the phage pool, using the target antigen as 'bait'.

The new technique, developed by Dr Andrew Griffiths and Dr Da Tawfik, of the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, employs a water-in-oil emulsion technique which, in effect, creates artificial cells containing antibody genes -- or T-cell receptor genes -- and their products.

No further details were provided, but the company's description indicated the antibodies or receptors are somehow 'expressed' on the lipid surface of the artificial cells. There, they are exposed to a binding reaction with the target antibody, possibly by passing the emulsion solution over a surface coated with the target antigen -- essentially the way the phage-display technique works.

According to Domantis, the emulsion technique does not involve the use of phage particles or bacteria, nor does it require repetitive and time-consuming lab work such as centrifugation or overnight culture.

It also has the capacity to be automated for high-throughput efficiency and convenience.

Domantis' chief scientific officer and co-founder Ian Tomlinson said, "This technology takes us one step closer to the ideal scenario of entering a chosen antibody target at one end of a machine and retrieving a binding antibody at the other."