Scientists from the University of Texas at Austin developed the new antibody-production approach to improve upon processes used previously to identify new drugs. Drug companies have used the more time- and labor-intensive processes to develop antibodies for treating rheumatoid arthritis, cancer and other diseases.
Lead investigator, Dr George Georgiou, said: “Our approach can provide significant time savings and it enables antibodies to be isolated to treat human diseases that may not be possible to obtain otherwise.”
Bacteria are easy to grow in an inexpensive broth. As a result, harmless forms of the bacterium E. coli have already been used as factories to produce antibodies. However, previous approaches required an antibody that looked promising to be transferred from bacteria to mammalian cells to pursue large-scale, commercial production.
Getting mammalian cells to produce lots of antibodies costs more, and can take several months. The direct bacterial approach developed by the laboratory shaves weeks off the production process. Based on the method’s early success, Dr Georgiou has begun a collaboration to identify antibodies to treat arthritis and asthma.