Vaccinex’s next-generation ActivMAB published in mAbs

Vaccinex announces a new publication in the journal mAbs describing a novel way in which its proprietary ActivMAb poxvirus platform can enable the presentation of high complexity, hard-to-drug proteins as targets for antibody discovery. The article, titled “Use of poxvirus display to select antibodies specific for complex membrane antigens” provides an overview of how Vaccinex created an elegant, poxvirus system modified for safety that can readily express high levels of hard-to-drug protein targets, such as G-protein coupled receptors and ion channels, on the natural external membrane of virus in a “native”, properly-oriented conformation. “We believe this new “Antigen Virus” application is a powerful complement to Vaccinex’ ActivMAb platform and we are pleased for this work to be published in mAbs. After rigorous evaluation, using a variety of different, complex protein targets including the SARS-CoV-2 Spike protein and a number of GPCRs, we believe that the ActivMAb system can readily generate functional and properly folded complex proteins that can be used for selection of novel, high-value, antibody therapeutics,” said Ernest Smith, Ph.D., Senior Vice President of Research and Chief Scientific Officer of Vaccinex. This novel application of Vaccinex’s ActivMAb technology was successfully used with OmniAb, Inc.’s high-throughput B cell screening and proprietary in vivo immunization platform. OmniAb was able to select antibodies against challenging multipass membrane targets, that were displayed on ActivMAb antigen viruses.