The company 4-Antibody is located in Basel and (as the name suggests) develops antibodies. They have a patented Retrocyte display, which lets them screen full length, native antibodies expressed in pre-B cells. A major advantage of the technology is they have the patent on the system, leaving full freedom to operate (ie no external licensing to be negotiated). 4-Antibody is located in the Technology Park Basel, home to a few companies including the biotech company NBE-Therapeutics. This company was just founded in 2012 by Ulf Grawunder, who was an original co-founder of 4-Antibody and left at the end of 2011.
In addition to their own pipeline, 4-Antibody has both commercial and academic partners and it is with their academic partner, the University of Erlangen in Germany, that they have their most advanced antibody in the pipeline, one against human Cytomegalovirus. Furthermore, 4-Antibody has expanded their discovery opportunities with a collaboration with Evotek announced this year. Together they have combined to offer an integrated antibody discovery and development service for companies that might wish to out-source their antibody discovery.
4-Antibody isn't the only company with a strategy to develop antibodies against targets as a service. GlycoFi (sold to Merck) had a similar strategy but using yeast that have been engineered with a more human glycosylation system. Adimab, another company using yeast display also provides antibodies to a company such as Arsanis.
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