MorphoSys Unveils Antibody Library, HuCAL PLATINUM®

MorphoSys AG announced the successful completion of a new proprietary antibody library, HuCAL PLATINUM. Initial results show that the new antibody library, which is approximately three-times larger than the former version, HuCAL GOLD, can provide a more diverse range of fully human antibodies, the company says.

In addition, the new technology enables the generation of antibodies having higher affinity as well as improved expression rates. The improvements achieved with this next generation antibody library are expected to shorten timelines from antibody discovery to pre-clinical development and result in antibody drug candidates with improved characteristics.

HuCAL PLATINUM contains several improvements over the previous version of the HuCAL library. The new library is based on the genetic information of approximately 45 billion different fully human antibodies.

Furthermore, a completely new approach to reproducing the natural structure of an antibody's most important region for antigen recognition was achieved using MorphoSys's TRIM technology. The increased library size and a genetic re-design of the HCDR3-region have so far yielded up to a 25-fold greater diversity of initial binders compared with the previous version

Additionally, certain sequence motifs on the DNA and protein-level identified as responsible for potentially limiting expression rates have been eliminated or significantly reduced. In total, these sequence updates have resulted so far in 2-fold increased average expression rates of antibodies in the IgG format selected from the HuCAL PLATINUM library and promise to shorten the time to completion of entire antibody generation programs.

The new library is completely compatible with established screening and selection methods developed by MorphoSys such as AutoCAL®, CysDisplay® and RapMAT®.