Amorfix and Trellis Bioscience to collaborate on anti-Cd38 antibody treatment for cancer

Trellis’ discovery platform, called CellSpot, uses computerized microscopy to drastically miniaturize a multiplexed antigen binding assay capable of characterizing millions of individual antibody producing B cells.

Hence, CellSpot enables discovery of very rare high quality human antibodies usually not detectable with standard techniques.

Amorfix’s ProMIS Discovery technology identifies disease specific epitopes (DSE’s) that are present only on diseased cells.

Together, the complementary technologies will enable the companies to isolate and develop fully human therapeutic antibodies that will target only cancer cells and not healthy ones. Under the terms of the collaboration, Amorfix will have an exclusive option to develop any resulting antibodies.

Trellis president and CEO Dr Stefan Ryser noted this collaboration with Amorfix is an important step in further extending its innovative cancer program that emerged from its discovery of antibodies against various cancer antigens in the blood of healthy donors.

"As we have explored the memory B-cells of healthy and disease survivor blood donors, we have detected rare high affinity antibodies that potentially protect those individuals from cancers and other diseases.

"Our CellSpot technology provides the ability to scan through millions of candidate antibodies in order to find the rare protective antibodies. By cloning those antibodies, we have the opportunity to provide that protection to everyone," Ryser added.