ABclonal Biotechnology Co., Ltd., a global life science tools and services provider, acquires Yurogen Biosystems LLC, a contract research organization dedicated to monoclonal antibody discovery using single-B-cell-based SMabTM platform, to better serve researchers in in vitro diagnostic, and antibody drug and therapeutic discovery markets worldwide. The acquisition comes after the company announced its $93 million Series C funding and marks the first step as the company expands its footprints from academic research reagents production to in vitro diagnostic and pharmaceutical industries.
ABclonal Technology, Massachusetts-based subsidiary of ABclonal Biotechnology, began collaborating with Yurogen Biosystems in 2017. ABclonal cites the pursuit for high-quality products and desire for innovation as the driving force behind the initial collaboration and present acquisition. The acquisition allows ABclonal to produce recombinant rabbit monoclonal antibodies using Yurogen's proprietary monoclonal antibody production platform, SMabTM. The single-B-cell-based technology enables high-throughput development of high-affinity, high-specificity monoclonal antibodies, significantly surpassing production capabilities of traditional technologies like hybridoma and phage display. The expansion of recombinant rabbit monoclonal antibody products and services enables ABclonal to fully embrace the in vitro diagnostic and antibody drug discovery markets worldwide.
"Recombinant monoclonal antibodies are the future of diagnostic and pharmaceutical research," said Zack Wu, chief executive officer at ABclonal. "In the medical research community, there is an increasing need for reagents with little to no batch-to-batch variation because of the rising demand for experiment replicability. Traditional antibodies such as polyclonal antibodies and hybridoma-based monoclonal antibodies simply cannot meet the requirements in the market. Because of that, the industry is experiencing an important transformation – a shift from traditional rabbit polyclonal antibodies and mouse hybridoma toward recombinant monoclonal antibodies."
Compared to polyclonal antibodies and hybridoma-based monoclonal antibodies, the quality of recombinant antibodies is highly stable. Large-scale production of such antibodies can be completed independent of animals. The use of rabbits during the initial processes results in an antibody repertoire with high affinity, strong specificity, and broad diversity. Stringently screened and verified recombinant monoclonal antibodies can better meet the demand for experiment validity and repeatability in scientific research and biomedical innovation.
ABclonal Biotechnology reports that in the next three years, it plans to invest $30 million to launch more than 10,000 new recombinant rabbit monoclonal antibody products for the global scientific research community and in vitro diagnostic market. The products will encompass research areas such as neurobiology, developmental biology, and immunology, as well as cover diagnostic platforms including enzyme-linked immunoassay, colloidal gold, chemiluminescence, and flow cytometry. For antibodies developed under this project, knockout validation will become the routine screening and validation procedure to maintain the quality of raw materials in in vitro diagnostics and biopharmaceutical development.
