The Antibody final meeting - a beginning of new ventures!
Participants the Antibody Final meeting pictured in September 2024.
– This is the beginning of new and exciting research ventures!
Professor Dieter Richter has been part of the Antibodies in Solution research programme since the start. He reflects that LINXS’ support has been instrumental in getting the research and work to where it is today.
– Without LINXS none of this would have been possible! It gave us the platform we needed to bring together such a diverse and competent set of researchers and companies, says Dieter Richter, Professor emeritus in experimental physics at FZ Jülich in Germany.
Dieter Richter is Professor emeritus in experimental physics at FZ Jülich in Germany.
The Antibodies in Solution program gathered 14 research groups, the American National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), and the pharmaceutical company Novartis in Switzerland. It aimed to increase fundamental knowledge on how antibodies behave at higher concentrations. This knowledge can help the pharmaceutical industry to decide what antibodies they should use and how to formulate them to produce therapies that are easier to inject and administer for patients. Key to its work has been the approach to only work with one reference antibody under identical sample conditions to create a huge data set, of use to both the experimental research groups and the modelers within the programme.
Final meeting was very enthusiastic
In September 2024, the program held its final meeting at LINXS. An event which gathered all the groups within the program, Novartis, NIST, and a number of interested researchers. Dieter Richter is very happy with the outcomes.
– It was a very enthusiastic meeting. People realized that they had made an important step into exploring this field; a field it is crucial we gain more knowledge about, says Dieter Richter.
Many new projects already started
Already there are new projects and constellations formed because of the collaboration at LINXS. Dieter Richter himself will work with a group in Rome, Italy, who will perform various simulations to study the motions of antibodies in solution, and with the group of Anna Stradner and Peter Schurtenberger in Lund. The experiments will build on some of the results captured in the program. They identify two dynamic properties as important for how the antibodies behave in solution: self-diffusion and zero shear viscosity.
– Finding out more about the relevance of these motions is very interesting from molecular point of view. There, the participants could identify two major type of internal antibody motions: “attack” motions exposing the binding domain that are highly preserved from low to physiological relevant concentrations and higher, while “search” motions of these domains are suppressed, says Dieter Richter.
– With this new collaboration we can perform more simulations and gain more knowledge. What further makes this work challenging, but also rewarding, is the specific structure of the antibody, which is Y-shaped. This adds more complexity to the work.
Anna Stradner and her group in Lund will also continue
The research group in Lund, led by Professor Anna Stradner, who led the Antibodies in Solution effort at LINXS will also continue its work. They will now focus on phase separation, aggregation and the formation of high viscosity solutions at elevated concentrations, a behavior that severely limits the successful formulation and application of antibodies. This will be performed in close collaboration with Ralph Biehl and Andreas Stadler together with Dieter Richter in Jülich, and the groups from Rome and Grenoble.
– Here we will profit from the new antibody provided by Novartis, says Dieter Richter.
– We will miss LINXS but are so grateful for how it has helped us to create a really unique collaboration of researchers and industry. Whatever happens in the future, I am certain that this work will have great impact. Not least in building capability and competence to work transdisciplinary towards a common goal.