Gigagen, Inc. — Department of Health and Human Services SBIR Phase I: <p>DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The Specific Aim of this SBIR Phase I project is t
Gigagen, Inc. — SBIR Phase I award from Department of Health and Human Services.
- Amount
- $217,469
- Agency
- Department of Health and Human Services · National Institutes of Health
- Program / Phase
- SBIR · Phase I
- Solicitation
- PA14-071
- NAICS
- —
- Place of performance
- CA
- Period
- —
Description
<p>DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The Specific Aim of this SBIR Phase I project is to build a technology for discovery of monoclonal antibody (mAb) drug candidates for pancreatic cancer from rare primary B cells. Pancreatic cancer has proven resilient to drugs that target oncology's usual suspects , including proteins related to angiogenesis, proliferation, and metastasis (Mackenzie and McCollum, 2009). mAbs are therapeutic agents of choice for oncology (Gura, 2002; Elder, 2011). Traditionally, mAb discovery programs identify a lead target antigen and screen antibody libraries for affinity using either phage display or mouse hybridomas. As an alternative, some academic and industry groups have been using human B cell hybridomas (Lang et al., 1990; Yu etal., 2008) to mine natural repertoires for candidate therapeutic antibodies. B cell hybridomas are technically challenging and inefficient, but natural antibodies have several advantages, including low immunogenicity, in vivo affinity maturation, and excelle</p>