The Antibody Society

the official website of the antibody society

An international non-profit supporting antibody-related research and development.

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Computational Antibody Discovery Symposium now On Demand

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Did you miss the Computational Antibody Discovery Symposium held on June 22?

On Demand videos are now available on YouTube!

  1. Introduction by Janice Reichert (The Antibody Society); Konrad Krawczyk (Natural Antibody); Andrew Buchanan (AstraZeneca), and
    the first speaker: Pietro Sormanni (University of Cambridge). Third-generation approaches of antibody discovery and optimization
  2. Tzvika Hartman (Biolojic Design). AI-driven design of smart therapeutics
  3. Sandeep Kumar (Boehringer Ingelheim). Biopharmaceutical Informatics: Syncretic use of computation and experimentation in discovery and development of biotherapeutics
  4. Ben Holland (Antiverse). Machine learning-based design of antibodies against difficult targets
  5. Panel discussion summary: Panelists provided their opinions and insights on these questions:
    What properties are more urgent to be able to design in silico – binding specificity, developability or something else?
    What performance should computational antibody design achieve to improve upon established protocols?
    What are the biggest hurdles for computational antibody discovery to achieve its full potential (models, data or something else)?
    How could industry and academia complement each other to solve the problem of computationally designing antibodies?
    What role does big tech/biopharma have to play in development and adoption of computational antibody design paradigms?
  6. Concluding remarks (Andrew Buchanan, AstraZeneca)

The complete playlist is here.

Please note: Victor Greiff presented unpublished material; posting of the video of his talk will be delayed. Please subscribe to our YouTube channel to receive an alert when new videos are added.

Thank you for your interest in the Symposium. We hope the videos inspire useful discussions in the future.

Computational Antibody Discovery: State of the Art

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Join us on June 22 for this free virtual Symposium – Registration is open!

Recent advances in computational and machine learning sciences have had a substantial impact on the antibody discovery process. Novel protocols that incorporate computational approaches can now be used to generate functional antibody therapeutics with good developability. In silico methods complement existing experimental strategies, and their use has become more mainstream in the biopharmaceutical industry. However, the application of computational de novo design strategies requires a thorough understanding of their capabilities, limitations, and experimental validation, as well as their place in the overall discovery pipeline and value chain.

In this Symposium, leading experts in computational antibody discovery from academia and industry will discuss their scientific strategies and progress to date. The event aims to provide a platform for better understanding of the breakthroughs and future directions in this multidisciplinary field, through talks, a panel session, and your questions and insights.

The Symposium commences at 8am PT/11am ET/4pm BST/5pm CET with speakers Drs. Pietro Sormanni, Yanay Ofran, Victor Greiff, Sandeep Kumar, and Ben Holland. The panel session, moderated by Konrad Krawczyk and including Jiye Shi, Tom Diethe and several speakers, will start at ~2pm ET. The Symposium concludes at 3pm ET following final remarks by Andrew Buchanan.

The full agenda is available here.

Biographical information for the Symposium speakers, panelists and hosts can be found here.

Register here for this free Symposium.

The Society has selected mAbs as its Official Journal!

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The Antibody Society is pleased to announce that it has partnered with Taylor & Francis, a leading research publisher, to make mAbs the Society’s Official Journal. mAbs is a multidisciplinary, open access journal dedicated to the art and science of antibody research and development. The journal has a strong scientific and medical focus but serves a broad readership, including specialists in technology transfer, legal issues, investment, and the regulation of therapeutics.

Since 2009, mAbs has published high quality reports, reviews, and perspective articles covering a range of antibody R&D topics, including:

  • Engineering and selection of antibody therapeutics, including antibody-drug conjugates, multispecific antibodies, and single-domain antibodies
  • Machine learning and artificial intelligence applications
  • Non-clinical studies of antibodies, such as mechanism of action studies, safety, and efficacy studies in animals
  • Manufacturing and formulation
  • Regulatory review of antibody therapeutics
  • Post-approval topics, such as markets

The journal’s 2021 Impact Factor is 6.440 and, in total, articles are downloaded at a rate of over 1 million per year. Articles in the current volume (14) can be found here.

Members of The Antibody Society receive a 10% discount on article publication charges using their member code.

We look forward to a productive partnership with Taylor & Francis.

Register for our upcoming webinar on BLI and its use in anti-snake venom antibody discovery

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Biolayer interferometry (BLI) is gaining popularity for protein and small molecule quantitation and kinetics research. The new advancements in biosensors, ease of use, reproducibility and low cost is driving its adoption. Even though BLI is one of the easiest of the tools, as with many other techniques, getting the best data depends on optimization of some key experimental factors. This webinar will discuss the best practices in BLI and result of such implementation by way of an example of screening of a broadly neutralizing antibody of snake venoms.

Snake envenomation results in over 100,000 deaths and 300,000 permanent disabilities in humans annually. Contemporary antivenoms are produced from the polyclonal serum of venom-immunized livestock and are specific to a single or narrow genetic range of related snakes. Could a broadly neutralizing monoclonal antibody, or a cocktail of a few broad components, provide protection from diverse snake venoms? Centi-3FTX-D09, originating from the B-cell memory of a human subject with an extensive history of diverse snake venom exposure, recognized a conserved neutralizing epitope of 3-finger toxins (3FTXs), a dominant snake neurotoxin. Four crystal structures of Centi-3FTX-D09 in complex with 3FTXs from mamba, taipan, krait, and cobra revealed the mechanism of broad neutralization to be epitope mimicry of the interface between these neurotoxins and their native host target, the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor. Centi-3FTX-D09 provided in-vivo protection against diverse 3FTXs and, in combination with the phospholipase inhibitor varespladib, protection against whole venom challenge for diverse, genetically distinct, elapid species.

About the Speakers

Register here!

2022 Science Writing Competition winners announced!

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Congratulations to our winners!

To make science accessible, clear, concise communication is essential. The Antibody Society thus offers our student and post-doctoral fellow members a chance to grow this skill through a Science Writing Competition. Entrants submitted essays of 1200 – 1500 words on a topic related to antibody research that were evaluated by our panel of judges.

Our post-doc and student winners are:

Dr. Finn Wolfreys, University of California, San Francisco, CA, USA

Essay title: Antibody Discovery’s Diversity Problem

Alexander Brown, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, Aurora, CO, USA

Essay title: Immunity in a Deck of Cards

The winning essays can be accessed via the links above.

View all winning essays from the
Science Writing Competitions here

The  next Science Writing Competition opens in Feb. 2023.

Thanks to everyone who participated!