BioCentury
ARTICLE | Tools & Techniques

Nature's symphony

November 15, 2004 8:00 AM UTC

As yet, no antibody company has been able to match the richness of the body's natural antibody reservoir. Symphogen A/S believes that its technology can capitalize on the human immune system's skills to produce highly diverse and specific monoclonal and polyclonal antibodies against a wealth of targets, and it says its antibodies can be ready for the clinic within two years.

A number of companies develop and market donor-derived immunoglobulin products, which carry the diversity of the human antibody response. But the only ways to produce such polyclonal antibodies is to extract them from the blood of human donors or from the blood of transgenic animals carrying the human immunoglobin gene. Both technologies result in limited quantities of product and carry the risk of transmitting infectious agents...