Discovering an Antibody’s Therapeutic Fingerprint

Abstract

Understanding an antibody’s mechanism of action (MOA) is critical to its clinical success. Not only does MOA have a large impact on safety and efficacy, but it also influences the intellectual property (IP) and commercial potential of a therapeutic. Those antibodies with novel MOAs represent significant opportunities in the competitive world of pharmaceuticals, and so identifying them is key.

High throughput Surface Plasmon Resonance (SPR) offers a unique advantage in the quest for successful next-generation therapeutic antibodies. Its expanded capabilities compared with traditional SPR and other label-free methods enable comprehensive screening of antibody libraries at the earliest stage of drug discovery, with the additional advantage of high resolution binding characterization through kinetics and epitope binning assays. Combining these results with those from orthogonal studies produces a fingerprint of each antibody’s therapeutic potential.

Understanding the significance of multi-parameter data within the context of an antibody library’s epitope landscape enables an informed selection of high-value clones based on MOA, and subsequent prioritization of resources to converge upon high-quality therapeutic candidates.

This white paper outlines the process of multi-parameter epitope binning, including the methods used to generate and analyze the data and how to interpret an antibody’s therapeutic fingerprint, while keeping an epitope-centric view of the entire data set. A case study will illustrate the application of this method for identifying antibodies of interest and in elucidating MOA.