OUR CAPABILITIES
Our Capabilities
Discovery and Early Protein Development
NBF supports therapeutic discovery and offers expertise in antibody generation and phage display combined with protein and antibody engineering techniques, as well as bioconjugation.
Biomedical Research Targets
The purification of high-quality recombinant proteins produced at NBF, can be used for crystallography structural analysis or screening small-molecule drug targets, through to novel, engineered biologics, vaccine antigens and diagnostic reagents.
Molecular Biology
Key to the project success is careful upfront design to optimise the expression plasmid for producing the therapeutic protein of interest. Expression cassette considerations include the choice of promoter, signal sequence for secretion, codon optimisation, and tags for purification or detection.
Protein and Antibody Engineering
Antibody engineering services include cloning of hybridoma sequences and production of chimeric antibodies, reformatting to antibody fragments (scFv or Fab) or from fragments to whole antibodies and production of bispecific antibodies and antibody fusions. Engineering of the antibody constant region to manipulate effector function and enhance antibody stability is also provided. The NBF can also provide advice on potential strategies for therapeutic development of “non-human” antibodies for further use.
Antibody Discovery by Phage Display
NBF provides antibody discovery services, utilising an in-house naïve human phage display scFv library. The facility has a track record in isolating antibodies against a variety of targets, including purified proteins, cell surface antigens and peptides. Once scFv fragments are isolated, these can be engineered into whole antibodies of various isotypes.
ADCs and Bioconjugation
A novel and highly potent class of drugs known as antibody. -drug conjugates (ADCs), utilises molecular chemistry to combine potent small molecules with mAbs that can combine the advantages of both modalities. NBF has extensive ADC experience and in generating effective strategies around the manufacture, chemical linker design, purification, and characterisation of similar radio-labelled or high potency bioconjugate molecules and diagnostics.