Infectious Disease (microbes)
Bacteria, fungi, and parasites are more difficult targets as compared to viruses, yet they too have conserved antigens. The driving force for this conservation is the critical functional role played by the proteins. Thus, by targeting these conserved sites, Trellis expects to generate therapeutic agents with a high degree of efficacy. By the very nature of the selection process, such antibodies are also expected to be more resistant to emergence of drug resistance than is the case for most antibiotics. Two pilot programs in this area are under evaluation.
In addition to discovery of antibiotics in the strict sense, the CellSpot technology can also be applied to discovery of anti-toxin antibodies. For this application, high affinity is a key functional requirement. Since the CellSpot process can be tuned to select for high affinity, it is expected to provide a significant advantage in this application.