8 Questions To Ask When Choosing An Antibody Discovery Partner

This blog post was written by Specifica, an IQVIA business, a registered Scientist.com supplier that delivers antibody discovery solutions as part of IQVIA Laboratories Discovery Sciences team. Their services are available on Scientist.com.

The success of your antibody discovery program hinges on choosing the right provider to help you achieve your goals. The best candidates will ensure they understand your needs and deliver tailored solutions, while also aligning to your budget and desired timeframe. Below are 8 questions to ask when vetting potential providers.

1) What is the quality of their antibodies? Can they deliver the high affinity, specificity and developability desired for your program?

The best companies can deliver a fit-for-purpose solution to your specific target identification and validation goals, rather than an identical approach for all campaigns. Ideally, they should share case studies and success stories from their existing customer base.

For example, the quality of Specifica’s in vitro libraries is demonstrated by the success of its customers, with numerous antibodies advancing into clinical development and 21 platform transfers to biotech and pharma companies spanning the US, Europe and Asia.

The top candidates should deliver:

• A powerful discovery pipeline: at Specifica, 75% of scFv campaigns and 50% of VHH campaigns generate at least one subnanomolar binder straight from selections; antibodies are highly developable, with 80% or more passing stringent thresholds in externally conducted validation studies.

• Rapid turnaround, minimal hurdles: Specifica delivers fully human leads within 16-20 weeks of campaign initiation, bypassing time-consuming immunization and humanization steps, and avoiding the challenges that can occur with those approaches, such as loss of affinity or developability.
• A collaborative mindset: It is common for discovery campaigns to encounter a challenge. You can consider Specifica to be an extension of your team. They will troubleshoot and problem solve with you, adapting protocols to fulfil your needs, rather than using a templated, “one-solution-fits-all” approach to all campaigns.

2) How will they accelerate your path to high-quality human antibodies?

Selecting a company that offers multiple ways to work together can help you choose the best fit for your needs. Specifica offers multiple services, making it easy to collaborate:

• Exclusive Generation 3 platform transfer, delivering a custom-built library with a unique set of HCDR3 donors. This option includes unlimited discovery campaigns, maturation module, comprehensive protocols and on-site training to fully integrate the technology into your workflows.
• Contract research projects, leveraging Specifica’s expertise directly through tailored research programs. Offers include discovery campaigns (scFv-IgG, including fixed light chain for bispecifics, and VHH formats), maturation services (affinity, developability, pH, specificity), reagent/antibody tool development and high-quality NGS datasets for your AI model training.
• Constant collaborative feedback, serving as an extension of your internal team, ready to brainstorm with you to overcome problems.

3) What is unique about their antibody discovery platform? What sets them apart from competitors?

If you value speed, precise antibody binding properties and quality, consider an in vitro program; some providers can deliver developable antibodies that don’t require humanization, without sacrificing affinity, and therefore may not require further optimization of affinity or developability.

Functionality at the forefront: with a proprietary blend of intelligent design, filtering and stringent quality control, Specifica’s patented Gen3 libraries consistently deliver top-tier performance. Harnessing the power of both phage and yeast display, Gen3 enables targeted discovery of drug-like antibodies that already embody the client’s desired properties – allowing you to directly select candidates, rather than screening hundreds of candidates.

4) What are the business terms? Will you retain full rights to the IP, or will you pay your provider royalties in perpetuity?

Specifica delivers best-in-class flexibility regarding business terms. We do not historically use royalty or milestone-based models, rather a straightforward fee-for-service approach. Furthermore, each customer owns the rights to develop antibodies from their campaigns or purchased libraries with no IP retained or other restrictions.

A robust gatekeeping process ensures that we deliver unique leads to each client. Our Gen3 technology allows us to have multiple libraries to select from, allowing each client to get first-tier antibodies, rather than leftovers from other client campaigns.

5) What is their approach to innovation? Have they published their research?

A company that fails to innovate risks being displaced. A company that isn’t publishing fails to meet the scrutiny and credibility of the trusted peer-review process.

• Specifica thrives on tackling emerging challenges head-on, embracing a philosophy where collaboration and innovation drive success. Most recently, Chief Scientific Officer Andrew Bradbury helped create the AIntibody challenge, an initiative exploring the transformative potential of AI in antibody discovery.
• Specifica is committed to innovation, as demonstrated by more than 10 peer-reviewed papers in the past 5 years tied to the Gen3 technology. Andrew is also sharing his wealth of knowledge to the next generation of antibody researchers through his antibody masterclasses, available via the Specifica website.

6) What is their approach to operational execution?

With deep scientific expertise, precise execution and seamless coordination among top-quality teams, Specifica delivers the rigor and efficiency to propel its customers antibody discovery to the next level.

• A senior team bringing decades of experience across industry, academia and commercial antibody development.
• A dedicated project manager overseeing each campaign to guarantee the collaborative efforts that enable each customer’s success.
• Strict gatekeeping and data transfer policies, assuring that each client receives top-tier, unique antibodies.
• A group of >25 skilled scientists assigned to six specialized, tightly integrated teams: library creation, protein quality control, phage and yeast display, bioinformatics, BSL-2 cell work and characterization (SPR and developability).

7) Do they offer additional upstream or downstream products or services that can be easily integrated?

Specifica is the cornerstone of the IQVIA Laboratories Discovery Sciences team, providing its customers with direct access to customized protein sciences (end-to-end solutions spanning production, characterization, quality control) and immunogenicity profiling (from in silico predictions to in vitro assays and exploratory studies).

8) How quickly can I get started?

Specifica prides itself on the ability to start studies rapidly and understands how critical this is for our clients in the discovery space. Our second laboratory, launched in 2024, in Research Triangle Park, NC, expanded our capacity and allows us to continue offering study starts immediately after contracting the work. Reach out to Specifica using the form below and a team member will reach out promptly to set up an initial call.

Connect with Specifica, an IQVIA business on Scientist.com