Objective

This presentation will summarise UCB’s bispecific antibody technology, its utility and applications to drug discovery and development of novel therapeutic modalities. UCB’s state-of-the-art antibody discovery technologies, coupled to capabilities in high content flow cytometry and imaging are at the core of UCB’s proprietary and novel bispecific antibody platform. This unique format allows combinatorial screening and profiling of large numbers of bispecific antibody combinations, allowing identification of potentially novel therapeutic molecules and target combinations with unique and previously undescribed activity and function. The presentation will also describe the concept of “obligate bispecific antibodies”, in which functional biology is dependent on simultaneous dual targeting of two molecules with a bispecific antibody, not achievable with mixtures of antibodies alone. Different approaches to harnessing the power of this strategy, ranging from focused “hypothesised” target pairings, to wider high throughput screening efforts of multiple bispecific combinations in complex phenotypic and functional translational assays will be discussed. The technology has applications in numerous and diverse disease indications, having been applied in for example, immune targeting, tissue remodeling, oncology and others.