Drug discovery programs cover Gene-to-Protein and Gene-to-Structure initiatives, as well as projects focused in antibody discovery and characterization
iBET’s drug development area benefits from extensive knowledge in protein engineering. This includes discovery of antibodies, large-scale production and detailed characterization of target proteins (including 3D crystallography and interaction studies)
Biopharmaceutical Development is assisted by biochemical and biophysical protein characterization that evaluate specific attributes such as purity, solubility, viscosity, hydrophobicity and thermal, structural and chemical stability. For this, a vast range of techniques are available:
- Differential Scanning Fluorimetry;
- Dynamic Light Scattering;
- Circular Dichroism & NMR spectroscopies;
- X-Ray Crystallography;
- HDX-Mass Spectrometry;
- Biochemical Assays (Fluorescence Resonance Energy Transfer – FRET; Fluorescence Polarization; ALPHAScreen);
- Surface Plasmon Resonance;
- Bio-Layer Interferometry;
- Mass Spectrometry;
- Capillary Viscosity;
- Capillary Electrophoresis.
The combination of all available techniques and method provides a deep in-process control and a sturdy physicochemical profiling of the purified biopharmaceuticals products.
The ability to predict feasibility and developability of biopharmaceuticals earlier in the discovery process enables identifying which drug candidates have the best critical quality attributes for further development.
Limited proteolysis complemented with Mass Spectrometry is routinely used to assess the most stable protein construct boundaries for production and structural studies. Feasibility studies on bacterial cells, insect cells and mammalian cell-cultures (suspension and adherent cells) are performed to enable the tailor-made design of large-scale production processes.