AnaptysBio Announces Issuance Of United States Patent Covering Proprietary Antibody Humanization Technology

SAN DIEGO, April 3, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- AnaptysBio, Inc., a leader in the discovery and development of therapeutic antibodies, announced today that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has issued US Patent #8,685,897 broadly covering a novel approach to antibody humanization using somatic hypermutation.  Leveraging key advantages of AnaptysBio's SHM-XEL platform, this approach rapidly generates high potency humanized therapeutic antibodies using minimal non-human sequence content.  The newly issued US patent is assigned to AnaptysBio and constitutes the 18^th patent issuance in AnaptysBio's intellectual property portfolio.

The majority of therapeutic antibodies licensed by the FDA for human use to date have been developed via humanization of murine antibodies.  However, historical technologies utilized for humanization have required large non-human segments to be incorporated, resulting in therapeutic antibodies with only 65-90% human content.  In addition, historical approaches have been hampered by labor-intensive framework engineering processes required to restore binding potency lost during humanization.  

In contrast, AnaptysBio's proprietary humanization methodology is designed to rapidly generate therapeutic antibodies using a single heavy chain complementary determining region of murine origin.  Relevant sequence information is directly isolated from murine B cells without the need to generate hybridomas.¹  By concurrently optimizing potency and biophysical properties using its SHM-XEL platform, AnaptysBio has routinely generated humanized therapeutic-grade antibodies with greater than 97% human content in less than 6 months.²     

"This patent issuance provides AnaptysBio with exclusive ownership to an entirely new paradigm in antibody humanization using somatic hypermutation.  We have overcome prior limitations by reducing both the murine content and time required to generate humanized antibody lead candidates," said Hamza Suria, AnaptysBio's president and chief executive officer. "In addition to our fully-human libraries, SHM-XEL based humanization provides a robust avenue for AnaptysBio to develop first-in-class therapeutic antibodies for emerging targets in oncology, inflammation, muscle-wasting disorders and fibrosis."

About AnaptysBio

AnaptysBio is a privately-held company focused on the generation of antibody therapeutics and is the leader in the use of somatic hypermutation (SHM) for antibody discovery and optimization. We are developing a pipeline of novel therapeutic antibody candidates, including differentiated programs in cancer immunotherapy, inflammation, fibrosis, muscle wasting disorders and antibody-drug conjugate applications.  AnaptysBio's proprietary SHM-XEL™ platform, which couples fully human antibody libraries with in vitro somatic hypermutation in mammalian cells to generate high affinity antibodies, replicates key features of the human immune system and overcomes limitations of prior antibody technologies.  By harnessing the natural mechanism of antibody maturation under controlled conditions, SHM-XEL allows for the selection of optimal antibody properties such as high affinity, stability, function, cross-reactivity, epitope diversity and manufacturability. The Company has previously announced partnerships with Merck, Roche, Novartis, Celgene, Gilead, Momenta, DARPA, DTRA and Tesaro.  AnaptysBio's investors include Frazier Healthcare Ventures, Novo A/S, Alloy Ventures and Avalon Ventures.  For more information, visit www.anaptysbio.com.

¹ PLoS ONE. 2012. 7(11): e49458.

² THE JOURNAL OF BIOLOGICAL CHEMISTRY. (2013). VOL. 288, NO. 11, pp. 7688–7696.

AnaptysBio Contact:
Julie Rathbun
[email protected]
206-769-9219

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SOURCE AnaptysBio, Inc.