Betting on human antibody providers
Human antibodies are a hot topic, and most of the attention has gone to Abgenix Inc.'s technology. But two other public companies - Medarex Inc. (MEDX) and Cambridge Antibody Technology Group plc (LSE:CAT) - also are players, each providing a slightly different way of generating antibodies. The Yuletide announcement that CAT will provide its phage display technology to develop human antibodies to G.D. Searle & Co. served as a reminder that companies will continue to make different choices about which technology serves them best.
Both ABGX (Fremont, Calif.) and MEDX (Annandale, N.J.) use transgenic mice that suppress the mouse antibody genes and express human antibody genes to produce human antibodies. ABGX has inserted 80 percent of the human heavy chain antibody genes and a significant amount of human light chains in its XenoMouse. ABGX President and CEO Scott Greer said that the "larger number of antibody building blocks translates into a more diverse response." As a result, he said, the probability of finding an optimal antibody is higher...