The Scottish Biologics Facility is built on a strong foundation of research and commercial expertise in protein engineering with a 10 year track record of successfully generating recombinant antibodies for both diagnostic and therapeutic applications. The SBF offers bespoke antibody development (and training) services to academia and industry with a key focus on biologics-based drugs, diagnostics and imaging reagents. The SBF is currently expanding its influence internationally by developing collaborations with academic researchers and commercially focussed organisations outside of the UK.
Phage Displayed Drug Libraries:
The facility maintains over 1 trillion recombinant binding structures in formats from single chain antibody fragments, to single domains and peptides. Phage display technology allows the interrogation of large (over 10 billion individual clones) antibody libraries and the selection of binders with high affinity and specificity.
Libraries available in the SBF for screening include:
- Naïve Human antibody library – McCafferty Library, University of Cambridge
- SBF Human semi-synthetic antibody libraries version 1.0 and 2.0
- Bespoke antibody and binding protein libraries from immunised sources
- Sheep, goat, chicken, mouse, rat, dog, shark and human
In-house vectors for binding site reformatting:
We have developed ‘plug and play’ vectors which allows rapid reformatting and site-specific modification of selected hits into soluble single chain antibodies (scAbs), chimeric mAbs with mouse Fc (Chimeric MuIgGs), bispecific mAbs and fully human monoclonal IgGs. These expression vectors facilitate rapid and smooth transition of any therapeutic/diagnostic programmes from discovery to development phases, by fast tracking the lead candidate selection process.
Current projects:
At present, the facility has four drug discovery programmes progressing in the areas of anti-infectives, neurodegenerative diseases and liver fibrosis. These include:
- Antibody based diagnostics and therapeutics for the detection and treatment of Gram-negative bacterial infections, especially Pseudomonas aeruginosa
- Antifungal antibodies against the major invasive fungal pathogen Candida albicans
- Antibodies for the early stage detection, diagnosis and treatment of Alzheimer’s disease
- Bispecific antibody based therapeutic for the treatment of NASH