Avacta Group, a life-sciences tool company based in the United Kingdom (UK) that provides instrumentation, consumables, and research reagents, has formed a collaboration with Glythera, a UK-based biotechnology company that develops antibody-based therapies, to develop bio-therapeutics as alternatives to antibody drug conjugates (ADCs). Under the collaboration, Glythera's conjugation chemistry technology, known as PermaLink, will be used in combination with Avacta's Affimer technology which uses small proteins that can be engineered to bind with specificity and affinity to protein targets.

The companies will develop materials and methods to be used in the generation of Affimer-drug conjugates and offer Affimer-drug conjugate development services, as well as licensing of the combined platform, to pharmaceutical developers. The proof of concept study aims to demonstrate the key technical and commercial benefits of the combination over traditional antibody and linker approaches.

The collaboration seeks to overcome some challenges of ADCs, including controlling the position of the payload and the stability of the linkages between the toxin payload and antibody.

Source: Avacta