The Importance of Epitope Binning for Biological Drug Discovery – June, 2014

Curr Drug Discov Technol. 2014;11(2):109-12.

Brooks BD.
Wasatch Microfluidics, LLC, 825 North 300 West, Suite C325, Salt Lake City, UT 84103, USA. ben@brooks.nu.

Abstract

The pharmaceutical industry is experiencing comeback sales growth due in large part to the industry’s R&D efforts that center on biologics drug development. To facilitate that effort, tools are being developed for more effective biologic drug development. At the forefront of this effort is epitope characterization, in particular epitope binning, primarily due to the role an epitope plays in drug function. Here we detail the financial advantages of epitope binning including (1) increased R&D productivity due to increased work in process, (2) reduced number of “dead-end”candidates, and (3) increased ability to reengineer antibodies based on the epitope. With the arrival of high throughput biosensors, this manuscript serves as a call to push epitope binning earlier in the biological drug discovery process.