While antibody affinity remains one of the primary selection criteria in many applications, it is of paramount importance to have an early-on epitopic mapping done on the panel of antibody leads. Lead selection solely based on affinity may result in a selection bias of antibodies that only bind to a small number of epitopes, leading to problems in downstream development if the functional epitopes are not represented by the high-affinity clones selected.
Epitope binning is used to characterize the binding of mAbs to a target antigen. In epitope binning, mAbs specific to the same target protein are analyzed in a pairwise manner against all other mAbs in a set to assess whether they block one another’s binding to a specific epitope. The mAbs that block binding to the same epitope are “binned” together.
mAbs within the same bin often function similarly. In addition, although the antibodies within a bin bind to the same antigen, they may have different mechanisms of action, critical for the treatment of specific cancers and infectious diseases. Therefore, epitope binning is particularly important for early-stage antibody-based drug discovery processes which could generate a large number of leads. Well-informed lead selection based on epitope mapping is critical to efficiently downselect only the best candidates for further investigation.
Additionally, epitope diversity is also important to broaden intellectual property (IP) protection as the epitope of binding is a crucial part of the IP filings of any therapeutic antibody.
Real-time, label-free binding analyses are critical methods in fast antibody screening and characterization. Abveris employs Carterra LSA (SPR) and Octet BLI for the detection of label-free molecular interactions with the appropriate assay formats. Both Carterra LSA and Octet BLI are fully integrated into our custom monoclonal antibody development. These systems allow us to rapidly screen hundreds of monoclonal antibody candidates for desired binding specificity and kinetics suited for your intended application(s).
*Different types of data analysis are available for high-throughput kinetics (sensogram) and epitope binning (binning diagram, network plat, and dendrogram)
*Different types of assay formats available for kinetics assessment and epitope binning
In a co-hosted webinar, Abveris and Carterra discussed the application of high-throughput kinetics and high-contents tools including Carterra LSA in antibody discovery, as exemplified by the anti-SARS-COV-2 spike protein campaign with concurrent hybridoma and single B cell approaches.
In a recent report, Abveris published the sequences of a panel of anti-SARS-COV-2 spike protein mAbs characterized using the Carterra LSA and other tools.
