Understanding Epitope Coverage Can Guide the Discovery of Therapeutic Antibody Cocktails for Infectious Diseases

Overview

The Carterra LSA can be used to screen and characterize large panels of monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) to better understand their epitope coverage. In the case of infectious diseases, a greater understanding of an individual’s antibody repertoire in response to infection can help guide the triage of antibody candidates towards an effective treatment. Using the Carterra LSA, the screening process is high throughput and consumes very little sample, allowing researchers to quickly generate an information-rich data set to help guide the selection of antibody combinations to serve as therapeutic antibody cocktails.

Introduction

Monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) are highly attractive as therapeutic agents due to their naturally high affinities and exquisite target specificities. With the biopharmaceutical market forecast to reach sales of almost USD 390 billion in 2024, and with the clinical pipeline of therapeutic antibodies being at record number, therapeutic antibodies are projected to experience further commercial and clinical success.

While most currently marketed antibody products treat cancer or inflammatory and autoimmune disorders, antibody therapeutics are providing transformative medicines for infectious diseases. This essentially exploits the role that antibodies evolved in nature to achieve – fighting invading pathogens and foreign molecules – and contrasts with traditional therapeutic antibodies already on the market, which target human proteins with the goal of interfering with a natural biological pathway.