Gigagen, Inc. — Department of Health and Human Services SBIR Phase II: NCI

Description

PROJECT SUMMARY Project TitleNext Generation Antibody Discovery and Development Technology OrganizationGigaGen IncPIDavid SJohnsonPh DDespite an enormous investment in novel therapiescancer still accounts forof US deathskilling andgtpeople every dayFor exampleonlyof pancreatic cancer patients andof lung cancer patients survive one year after diagnosisAdditionallyoncology treatments cost $billion per year in the USand are expected to grow atper year throughMonoclonal antibodiesmAbsare now the biological agents of choice for cancer therapyThree of the top six grossing therapeutics worldwidebevacizumabrituximaband trastuzumabare oncology mAbsTodaymost mAb discovery programs use either some flavor of single chain variable fragmentscFvdisplay or mouse immunization followed by hybridoma isolationDisplay technologies like phage display have tremendous ease of usewhich enables Randamp D programs to screen through billions of antibodies in parallelUnlike conventional phage display technologiesmouse immunizations produce fully natural antibodieswhich are often easier to develop than antibodies discovered through displayThough display and mouse immunizations have produced breakthrough therapeutic antibodiesRandamp D programs are always looking for fasterdeeperand more efficient antibody technologiesThe Specific Aim of this IMAT Phase II SBIR project is to develop GigaLinka next generation high throughput molecular technology for discovery and development of oncology drugs from mammalian B cell repertoiresGigaLinkis the only technology that uses primary B cells to make millionsto billions diverse DNA libraries of antibodiesand then expresses the DNA libraries as protein for affinity screening and antigen discoveryAs a DNA based technologyGigaLinkuniquely enables massively parallel antibody screeningengineeringand developmentA successful IMAT Phase II SBIR project will show that the GigaLinkantibody Randamp D platform can help our customers understand basic tumor immunology and discover and develop therapeutic antibody candidatesWe will use the profits from GigaLinkservice revenues plus venture capital to build our own internal programs for oncology therapeutic antibody discovery PROJECT NARRATIVE Project TitleNext Generation Antibody Discovery and Development Technology OrganizationGigaGen IncPIDavid SJohnsonPh DBetter methods for discovery of antibodies could eventually lead to drugs for treatment of a variety of diseases and conditionsincluding cancerWe are building a novel technology that uses microfluidics and DNA sequencing to capture and characterize new therapeutic antibodies from immune cells in human and mouse blood