Advancing Antibody Drug Discovery (ABvance)

Overview

This project set out to generate novel Ab structures and improve Ab structural data sharing across the life sciences. The objective was to increase researchers’ predictive power and their ability to accurately model Ab structures; considerably reducing the time and cost associated with generating experimental data to support decision-making in drug projects.

A major project milestone involved 12 antibody structures being deposited into the European Bioinformatics Institute’s (EMBL-EBI) Protein Data Bank (PDB).

Humans are capable of producing 10 billion distinct Ab molecules, and at the inception of the project there were only around 3,000 Ab structures in the public domain. This data is fundamental in drug discovery. This led the Pistoia Alliance and its members to address some of the considerable gaps that exist in the collective understanding of a typical human Ab repertoire which is key to the design of high quality candidates during the discovery of biologic drugs.