Substantial reduction in cycle time required to identify and isolate targets
High-speed sorting using FACS enables a reduction in the amount of time to sort from 3 or 4 months to 25 days—an approximate 75% improvement.
Significant increase in yield of positives identified and cloned in each cycle
DiSH methodology depositing target hybridomas in single cell wells avoids the loss of high quality prospects due to overgrowth from competing cells, resulting in nearly a two-fold increase in positives versus conventional methods.
Dramatic increase in the number of stable positives isolated in each cycle
Using traditional methods, many positive clones fail to remain viable due to issues with chromosome structure. Comparatively, 91% of positive hybridomas remained stable through the cloning process using DiSH versus 23% of positives when using conventional hybridoma technology.
Cleanly aligns with current hybridoma screening and production methods
Unlike selected competitive technologies that require specialized laboratory training, workflow and infrastructure, the DiSH protocol closely parallels the industry's dominant hybridoma development methodology, making adoption simple and straightforward.
Abeome's proprietary methodology is focused on breaking down the two major bottlenecks of conventional hybridoma screening and cloning: speed and quality of results. The Company's DiSH (Direct Selection of Hybridomas) technology offers an improved process for rapidly selecting and cloning desired hybridomas that produce antibodies with optimal binding characteristics. Details and data on the DiSH technology were published in the Journal of Immunological Methods 343 (2009) 28-41.
Abeome's DiSH technology offers a much-improved method for selecting desired hybridomas. Under normal circumstances, B-cells, when stimulated by an antigen, secrete antibodies but do not surface-present them. However, by using a genetically-modified myeloma partner, Abeome creates hybridomas that both secrete antigen-specific antibody and also present antibody on the cell surface of the hybridoma.
By using a fluorescent-labeled antigen, the Company can “illuminate” the hybridomas of interest and isolate them from the population of uninteresting cells. Once the cells are bound with fluorescent-labeled antigen, researchers rapidly select them directly using fluorescence- activated cell sorting (FACS) instrumentation. Once selected, the instrumentation can rapidly deposit individual cells into micro-titer plates for culturing, ensuring the purity and stability of specific colonies and eliminating the need for repetitive rounds of limiting dilution screening (LDS).
These efficiency improvements result in a 6-fold improvement in the number mAbs Abeome is capable of generating with its proprietary technology. Thus the benefits of DiSH technology provide drug discovery and development programs with an important competitive edge. Successful products are likely to be those with the best combination of development speed and optimal characteristics (e.g., affinity, specificity, immunoglobulin sub-type, etc.). Abeome's methodology speeds up hybridoma production, while increasing the number of high-affinity antibodies that might otherwise be lost.