PharmAbs The KU Leuven Antibody Center

PharmAbs is an innovation, valorization and incubation platform at KU Leuven clustering the expertise of 5 academic groups. PharmAbs’ mission is to bridge the gap between academic research and industry by transferring the results of biomedical research into antibody-based diagnostic/therapeutic solutions for personalized medicine.

Founded in 2008 and based in Leuven and Kortrijk, PharmAbs builds upon a strong multidisciplinary core team of 8 people including 5 senior research experts, 1 general and business development manager and 2 experienced staff scientists. This team is complemented with several lab technicians and PhD students shared with the founding laboratories. To date, about 12 translational R&D projects are supported by PharmAbs aimed at the development of innovative antibodybased therapeutics or diagnostics or breakthrough antibody technologies. PharmAbs offers its expertise to academic groups and companies through joint R&D partnerships or fee-for-service projects. PharmAbs combines different specialized technologies for the generation and engineering of antibodies, for in vitro antibody production and characterization and for customized immunoassay development. PharmAbs has a market-driven, product-oriented R&D strategy. In that respect, it selects earlystage academic R&D projects, offers its expertise to researchers and collaborates with them towards the development of a “product”, being an antibody-based lead candidate for therapeutic use or a research-use only test for diagnostic use. In the field of therapeutic antibody development, PharmAbs typically starts from a therapeutic concept and a promising target, generates a monoclonal antibody panel with the desired functionalities, works out the in vitro evaluation and demonstration of in vivo proof-of-concept in a relevant animal model and then licenses it to a Biotech or Pharma company to complete the further preclinical and clinical studies. When developing diagnostic solutions, PharmAbs can cover almost the whole development trajectory as it can generate all assay reagents, do the assay design and analytical development and thanks to its collaboration with the UZ Leuven hospital, even can cover clinical validation. At the end of the internal diagnostic development trajectory, the platform licenses the test to a diagnostic company that only has to convert it into a CE-label test. PharmAbs is developing diagnostic and therapeutic solutions for a broad range of applications. For instance, the center is developing (rapid) diagnostic tests to accurately measure the drug levels of therapeutic antibodies such as infliximab, adalimumab, vedolizumab,… and tests for determining anti-drug antibody levels for use in the management of patients suffering from chronic inflammatory diseases such as Crohn’s disease or psoriasis. These tests help clinicians to find the right drug at the right dose for each individual patient. The platform has already licensed many of such tests to companies that introduced them on the market. A second example is the development of a bispecific antibody for treatment of ischemic stroke. Although safe thrombolysis of blood clots is a huge unmet need, there hardly has been any innovation in the development of pharmacological strategies in the past 20 years. A bispecific antibody in preclinical development by the platform has the potential to fill the existing gap. PharmAbs has the ambition to continue to growth organically while continuously developing pipeline of novel diagnostic and therapeutic solutions emerging from innovative academic research. In addition, PharmAbs has the objective to spin-out particular technologies into separate valorization platforms or spin-off companies complementing its licensing activities to existing companies. Dr. Nick Geukens, PharmAbs General Manager © PharmAbs

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PharmAbs Dr. Nick Geukens PharmAbs General Manager Laboratory for Therapeutic and Diagnostic Antibodies Herestraat 49 box820 - B-3000 Leuven Tel.: +32 (0)16 377 177 - +32 (0)498 08 67 44 Email: Nick.geukens@kuleuven.be https://www.pharmabs.org/