Adimab: Simplifying the antibody recipe

Adimab Inc. believes its yeast-based platform for discovering, maturing and producing human antibodies is faster and less cumbersome than conventional methods like phage display technology and in vivo mouse systems. Last week, the company raised an undisclosed sum in a series B round that it believes should be enough to integrate all the components of its platform and get it through 2009.

"Phage display technology has been widely used, but it only allows you to display fragments of antibodies. First you get the fragment in E. coli, then you find which one binds, then you need to engineer an antibody, then express that antibody in mammalian cells, then test to see if it still retained its function. We cut all that out and do it in one step," CEO Tillman Gerngross told BioCentury...