Bio-Rad Laboratories, Inc., a global leader in life science research and clinical diagnostics products, announced the publication of a peer-reviewed study in Nature Communications, "Engineered Reversible Inhibition of SpyCatcher Reactivity Enables Rapid Generation of Bispecific Antibodies"¹. The study demonstrates the utility of Bio-Rad’s SpyLock technology for the rapid generation and screening of bispecific antibodies, allowing greatly accelerated functional validation of bispecifics and identification of the most promising candidates.

The study describes the method used to successfully engineer functional control into SpyCatcher protein, resulting in a reversibly inhibitable mutant, termed SpyLock (SL), which is in turn fused to regular SpyCatcher (SC) to create BiLockCatcher protein — an SL-SC dimer offering an accelerated route to bispecific antibody generation. The proprietary SpyLock technology significantly expands the toolbox for the modular construction of antibodies based on SpyTag/SpyCatcher protein ligation system, Bio-Rad’s new rapid bispecific generation and screening service, launched earlier this year², is based on SpyLock protein technology and provided as part of its Pioneer™ Antibody Discovery Platform. The service enables customers to identify effective antibody combinations to take forward into drug development.

The Pioneer Platform features a fully human synthetic phage display library engineered to include more than 200 billion unique sequences and to be capable of identifying high-affinity antibody candidates using Bio-Rad’s SpyDisplay selection technology. With proprietary TrailBlazer™ technology, the Pioneer Platform provides prototypes of therapeutic antibodies in a multitude of formats for streamlined lead identification. The final antibodies are fully mammalian expressed IgGs, functionally characterized with a complete data package and sequence.

"The therapeutic potential and efficacy of bispecific antibodies is widely acknowledged. Our SpyLock strategy generates bispecific antibodies in a single, scalable format, facilitating the screening of a large number of antibody combinations. The service streamlines and accelerates the generation of bispecific antibodies in as a little as 90 minutes," said John Cardone, Marketing Manager, Custom Antibodies, Life Science Group, Bio-Rad. "Demonstration of this methodology and its publication in a high-profile journal is a testament to the quality of our innovative approach and scientific team, which we are pleased to offer to customers as part of our Pioneer Antibody Discovery Platform."