On November 9, 2023 OmniAb, Inc. (Nasdaq: OABI) reportedly held its first Research & Technology virtual event earlier today, during which members of the management team reviewed the Company’s technology offerings and highlighted the launch of OmnidAb, the industry’s first and only transgenic chicken producing single domain antibodies (sdAbs) (Press release, OmniAb, NOV 9, 2023, View Source;Technology-Virtual-Event/default.aspx [SID1234637454]). The archived webcast and speaker slides will be available on the Investors portion of OmniAb’s website.
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"Since the completion of the transaction that created OmniAb as an independent public company almost exactly one year ago, we’ve made tremendous progress in building out our business and research teams and increasing the number of active partner programs. With the infrastructure in place to support our highly scalable business model, OmniAb is well positioned for significant growth with a differentiated platform as we facilitate the discovery and development of novel therapeutic antibodies by our partners," said Matt Foehr, Chief Executive Officer of OmniAb.
"Our technologies are making important impacts on our partners’ R&D pipelines and are having positive impacts on patients’ lives. OmnidAb is an exciting new technology that is now being used by our partners. We look forward to additional new technologies and partner experience enhancements launching next year and beyond as our internal innovation engine is becoming more efficient," he added.
Today’s virtual event featured presentations from senior management with business updates and an overview of various technology platforms, including the newly-launched OmnidAb platform.
"We continue to innovate around our technology offerings. The latest innovation is OmnidAb, a platform for single domain antibodies based upon a human VH scaffold that affinity matures in a chicken host environment to provide a functionally diverse immune repertoire unavailable from mammalian systems. OmnidAb is the first and only transgenic chicken producing sdAbs and creates the opportunity to significantly improve discovery approaches at a time when there is growing industry interest in the modality," said Bill Harriman, Ph.D., Senior Vice President, Antibody Discovery of OmniAb.
OmnidAb Technology Launch
Management provided an overview of the OmnidAb transgenic chicken novel host system that builds upon the success of its OmniChicken legacy. Highlights included:
OmnidAb transgenic chickens express an optimized single-domain humanized framework, which can be utilized as modular building blocks, unlocking the versatility to "fit the biology" for a wide range of human disease, and are well suited to support a variety of therapeutic modalities.
OmnidAb antibodies target distinct epitopes and have favorable developability profiles with high expression levels in mammalian cells.
The current predominant process to discover therapeutic sdAbs requires large animal immunization and engineering – including humanization and optimization – adding time and increasing risks. Built-in use of an optimized human scaffold combined with efficient in vivo affinity maturation in OmnidAb minimizes the need for downstream engineering.
Distinct from traditional antibodies, sdAbs produced by OmnidAb chickens have a compact format that opens significant new opportunities. Given their unique physical properties, they can be leveraged for alternate routes of administration, diagnostic applications and therapeutic approaches beyond what is typically possible with conventional antibodies.
Enhancing Discovery with OmniDeep
Management also discussed the ability to enhance discovery capabilities with OmniDeep, a suite of in silico tools for therapeutic discovery and optimization that is woven through OmniAb’s various technologies. Building upon the Biological Intelligence (BI)embedded within the diverse antibody repertoires from OmniAb animals, OmniDeep leverages artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to assist antibody discovery and optimization. The combination of BI and AI offers partners new large-scale discovery workflows and optimization tools for their discovery campaigns.
The Ion Channel Opportunity
Lastly, management highlighted differentiated core capabilities to target ion channels and transporters, as they are key components in various biological processes.
OmniAb’s ion channel technologies, coupled with its experienced team of ion drug discovery experts, offers a differentiated capability to advance the discovery of this class of therapeutics. The company has key collaborations for these high-value targets with GSK and Roche. OmniAb differentiates its ion channel discovery platform via continuous expansion and development of cutting-edge technologies, including custom cell lines, high-throughput electrophysiology, proprietary X-ray fluorescence, structure-based optimization leveraging cryo-EM and molecular dynamics, deep learning models and more. Because key areas for ion channels are buried in the membrane and can be challenging to reach, the smaller size of OmnidAb and OmniTaur binding domains compared to conventional antibodies provides a new approach to ion channel therapeutics.