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ImmunXperts’ immunogenicity testing allows you to de-risk your pipeline and optimize candidates for reduced adverse events and lower immunogenicity risk. Choose from a comprehensive immunogenicity assessment or just the components you need.
Our in vitro assays include flow cytometry, cytokine profiles, and ELISpot options
Protein therapeutics and cell and gene therapies represent a significant proportion of the currently available therapies for a broad spectrum of diseases and is one of the fastest growing markets. However, the development of these biotherapeutics can be challenging.
One major hurdle in the therapeutic development is the risk for unwanted immunogenicity—the ability to trigger an unwanted immune response which translates in the clinic to anti-drug antibodies, which can lead to decreased efficacy and safety concerns.
Today, several tools are available to improve and accelerate therapeutic drug development in an early stage. A well balanced and rational development strategy can help to deselect immunogenic drugs early on and reduce the number of clinical failures.
As the in vivo induction of anti-drug antibodies is a complex process, a multistep approach or a combination of tools might be required to document this risk in a non-clinical set-up.
Often used as a first step is an in silico T-cell epitope prediction algorithm such as NetMHCIIpan, which can be used to assess and compare the immunogenic risk potential of the lead candidates based on the primary sequence and guide de-immunization strategies.
Further monitoring of the innate immune response can be done with cytokine release assays. Assessment of the immunogenic risk can be performed using the MAPPs (MHC-associated peptide proteomics) assay and in vitro T-cell proliferation and activation assays to determine and rank the immunogenic risk of the test proteins or identify specific regions of concern.
To manage this unwanted immunogenicity, in vitro assays using human primary immune cells can be used to assess both the innate as well as the adaptive response. To achieve reliable and consistent results, high quality primary immune cells should be used in combination with sensitive fit-for-purpose in vitro assays.
Unwanted immunogenicity can be triggered by many different factors, which can be divided in several categories. These include product-related factors, treatment-related factors, patient-related factors, and mode of action.
With the newer biotherapeutics, the mode of action (MOA) has also proved to be of great influence, with molecules targeting the immune system showing an (inhibitory or stimulatory) risk of immunogenicity, as observed with immune-checkpoint inhibitors or therapeutics targeting dendritic cells (DCs). Next to all these factors, there might still be unknown ones as well contributing to unwanted immunogenicity. Together, this illustrates the complexity of the question.
FDA guidance suggests that in vivo models are not predictive for immunogenicity in humans; thus in vitro models using innate and adaptive immune cells are a more viable option.1
To address the different steps in the immune answer cascade, the use of in silico and in vitro models using innate and adaptive immune cells isolated from healthy donors are a more viable option, as an animal model has reduced predictive value for human immunogenicity. Although the pre-clinical risk analyses performed with these in silico and in vitro tools are not mandatory, they add a valuable quality check in the development program of the biotherapeutic.2 They can help pharmaceutical and biotech companies avoiding taking forward a candidate with a high immunogenic risk potential. Many efforts are put in harmonizing these assays amongst industry, to facilitate comparison amongst them.2