Carterra, a provider of label-free high-throughput antibody discovery and development, and ENPICOM, a bioinformatics software solutions provider, are collaborating to streamline the analysis of rapidly growing sequencing and antibody screening data generated in the lab. 

The collaboration will focus on accelerating the identification of clinical-grade antibody candidates with improved characteristics, according to the companies.

Carterra’s high-throughput Surface Plasmon Resonance (HT-SPR) biosensor technology enables detailed screening and characterization of thousands of antibodies in one step, allowing up to 100 times the throughput of traditional platforms in 10% of the time while using only 1% of the sample required by other systems, according to the company. The Carterra LSA and LSAXT have improved screening capabilities which have made them ideal for pharmaceutical companies, biotechs, CROs, government agencies, and academia. Among its accomplishments, the LSA was instrumental in the 90-day discovery and development of the COVID-19 therapeutic, bamlanivimab, by Eli Lilly and AbCellera.

Meanwhile, ENPICOM’s IGX Platform helps researchers manage, analyze, and visualize immune repertoire data. The platform integrates different sequencing datasets and incorporates experimental data and metadata. The rapid uptake of high-throughput repertoire sequencing (Rep-Seq) in antibody discovery campaigns in recent years provides dramatically more viable therapeutic candidates to explore, moving from a library of hundreds to millions. This increased sampling space enables scientists to find clinical candidates with more diverse binding kinetics, affinity, and developability characteristics, according to the company.

“Combining the high-quality binding data on thousands of antibodies screened by the Carterra platforms with the vast number of sequences that are obtained with Rep-Seq allows our clients to map the candidate space to an unprecedented level,” says Paul van der Velde, CEO at ENPICOM. “By leveraging the best of both technologies, we enable researchers to extrapolate the binding characteristics to a much larger pool of candidates to find even better lead molecules.”

The combined analysis of the high-quality datasets generated using Carterra’s label-free platforms and large sequencing data requires flexible software tools which ENPICOM’s IGX Platform provides. Moreover, due to its scalable computational infrastructure, the IGX Platform creates a unique environment to leverage these datasets to train and develop AI and ML models in therapeutic discovery.

“We’re excited to join ENPICOM in enabling antibody discovery labs utilizing NGS and AI/ML routines with industry-leading epitope and kinetic analysis data as they interrogate large candidate libraries,” says Chris Silva, vice president of Marketing and Product at Carterra. “These solutions will benefit investigators around the world by allowing them to create new and revolutionary therapeutics rapidly.“

Further reading: Fabric Genomics and DNAnexus Collaborate to Improve Data Analysis for Genomic Medicine