What is MAbstract® technology?

Crucell’s MAbstract® technology is a human antibody-based phage display system, which facilitates the discovery of novel drug targets and the identification of human monoclonal antibodies against those targets. A phage (or ‘bacteriophage’) is a virus that can infect and multiply in bacteria. In phage display technology, phages are genetically engineered  to expresses the pathogen-binding part of a human antibody on their surfaces. In the MAbstract® technology, a library of phages exposing a wide variety of human antibodies fragments on their surfaces is brought into contact with disease-causing microorganisms (pathogens) or parts of pathogens in order to identify human antibodies that selectively bind to targets of interest.

MAbstract® technology is an efficient method for the discovery  of  human antibodies to be applied for the prevention, diagnosis and therapy of diseases.

Key Strengths

MAbstract® technology has a number of potential advantages over other technologies currently used for generating antibodies.

• MAbstract® technology is a human antibody-based system that selects antibodies for possible medical use and discovers novel drug targets using whole cells, tissues or infectious agents.
• MAbstract® technology does not have inherent limitations with respect to antibody specificity.
• MAbstract® technology has been used to isolate antibodies for numerous disease applications. Selected antibody specificities can be directly reformatted into monoclonal antibodies for production using PER.C6® technology.
• Fully human antibodies have an excellent safety profile and may offer significant advantages in terms of safety and efficacy over humanized and chimeric antibodies.