AbCellera inks therapeutic antibody discovery deal

On Thursday, privately-held Canadian biotech firm AbCellera Biologics, a biotech enabling the next generation of antibody therapeutics, announced a major partnership milestone, this being a multi-target, multi-year, collaboration with Swiss pharma giant Novartis (NOVN: VX).

The partnership will allow Novartis to identify antibodies for 10 therapeutic targets in Novartis’ pipeline, using a unique combination of microfluidics, high-throughput imaging, genomics, deep computing/AI.

AbCellera’s core technology is a high-throughput microfluidics system that screens millions of single antibody-producing B cells from natural sources to find the best antibodies for any given target, with high affinity, specificity, or any other relevant binding property. The company then uses advanced sequencing, AI/machine learning, and data visualization techniques to sift through hundreds of antibody molecules to identify the best drug candidates.