MORPHOSYS DEVELOPS NEW SCREENING TECHNOLOGY
MorphoSys (Neuer Markt: MOR), the Munich-based biopharmaceutical company, has announced the development of a new screening method for use in conjunction with its proprietary HuCAL© technology. The method, cysteine mediated phage display, called CysDisplay™, was presented at the 11th IBC Antibody Engineering conference in San Diego, California. The new screening technology will lead to improved efficiency of antibody generation as well as enabling the generation of higher affinity antibodies. The method is exclusively developed by MorphoSys scientists, patent applications covering the technology have been filed.
“The development of CysDisplay is an important breakthrough by our scientists”, commented Dr. Thomas von Rueden, Chief Scientific Officer, MorphoSys AG. “It makes HuCAL an even more powerful technology for antibody generation. With CysDisplay, we expect to identify the very highest affinity antibodies, which are often the most promising new drug candidates.
CysDisplay™ is a novel and unexpected variant of bacteriophage-based screening, which uses a chemically cleavable linkage to attach antibodies to the surface of the bacteriophage. During library screening, recovery of individual antibodies is performed by cleavage of the linkage, a process that is much more controllable than the elution used in existing screening methods. Antibody recovery is thereby standardized, resulting in more efficient process development, and more reliable antibody generation. CysDisplay™ is therefore ideally suited for use with MorphoSys’ automated screening technology AutoCAL™. (See also the CysDisplay™ information on the MorphoSys website at http://www.morphosys.de/technology/CysDisplay)
MorphoSys develops and applies innovative technologies for the production of synthetic antibodies which accelerate drug discovery and target characterization. Founded in 1992, the Company's proprietary Human Combinatorial Antibody Library (HuCAL) technology is used by researchers world-wide for human antibody generation. The Company currently has licensing and research collaborations with Bayer (Berkeley, California/USA), Roche AG (Basel/Switzerland), DuPont Pharmaceuticals (Wilmington, Delaware/USA), Millennium (Cambridge, Mass/USA), Chiron (Emeryville, California/USA), GPC Biotech AG (Munich/Germany) ProChon Biotech (Rehovot/Israel), Eos Biotechnology (South San Francisco/California/USA) and ImmunoGen (Cambridge, Mass/USA).
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