Disease Areas
Humans routinely produce antibodies against invading or non-self agents, and human immune sera have been used as passive immunotherapy for decades in a variety of diseases despite the major manufacturing drawbacks associated with this antibody source. MedImmune pioneered the transition from a polyclonal human serum therapeutic (Respigam™) to a monoclonal antibody (Synagis™), establishing the principle that a single monoclonal antibody (mAb) can provide efficacy comparable to a native polyclonal response.
It has proven difficult to fully exploit the native human immune repertoire, however. Compared to other antibody sources, such as murine hybridomas or phage display recombinant libraries, the frequency of favorable clones is low and the useful in vitro lifetime of the human B cells is quite short (even with EBV infection as an immortalization tool). Trellis’ CellSpot™ technology has conquered the obstacles impeding exploitation of the human repertoire, enabling millions of individual antibody producing B cells to be characterized for multiple properties.
Potential applications cover a wide range of disease classes:
- Infectious Disease (viruses)
- Infectious Disease (microbes)
- Auto-immune Diseases
- Cancer