ENPICOM introduces IGX Platform for powerful liability prediction to de-risk antibody development
The bioinformatics software company ENPICOM showed the capabilities of its new IGX Platform, at the recent Biologics UK conference. The platform accurately annotates exposed liabilities, performs structural modelling of antibodies at scale, and determines developability profiles using customizable penalties. This major development allows researchers to improve their candidate selection by making accurate developability predictions for thousands of sequences at the same time, in a secure, intuitive environment.
“The spectacular progress in the field of antibody discovery calls for more powerful tools to effectively leverage all generated data. ENPICOM has tackled the challenge of candidate pool expansion with the launch of the Antibody Discovery Module earlier this year. The new liability analysis capabilities we are adding now will enable scientists to easily select better antibodies with even greater confidence,” said Jos Lunenberg, co-founder and Chief Executive Officer at ENPICOM.
Existing approaches to predict developability and identify sequence liabilities that are based on simple sequence analysis scale well in terms of the required computational resources, but do not provide sufficient accuracy, as they fail to consider the 3D structure of the antibody.
Structural modelling, on the other hand, provides detailed insight into the surface exposure of unwanted motifs, leading to highly reliable liability predictions. Performing these predictions in a high-throughput manner is incredibly challenging and time-consuming, as itrequires significant computationalresources and specialized software infrastructure. ENPICOM solves these challenges by integrating SAbPred directly into the IGX Platform. SAbPred is developed by the Oxford Protein Informatics Group and is a validated, peer-reviewed, and globally recognized toolbox for accurate and efficient structural analysis of antibodies.
“The three main challenges in the analysis of liabilities we aim to address are accuracy, throughput, and ease of use,” said Dr Nicola Bonzanni, co-founder and Chief Product Officer at ENPICOM. “The IGX Platform enables researchers to fully utilize the added value of NGS data. You can accurately predict exposed liabilities for thousands of sequences at once, easily assess the developability of candidates, and proceed with your selection with confidence.”
Scientists using the IGX Platform can now:
- Use a validated tool to independently perform structural modelling analysis and accurately annotate liabilities.
- Increase candidate success by flagging exposed liabilities early in the discovery phase and identify antibodies with the best developability properties
- Annotate structural liabilities for thousands of sequences and integrate the developability information throughout their entire workflow.
- Configure their own liability penalties through an intuitive UI to compute scores that align with their de-risking strategy.
- Benchmark candidate developability profiles against a database of clinically validated antibodies.
- Overlay developability characteristics on information-rich visualizations like phylogenetic trees to prioritize and select the best candidates.
The IGX Platform and the Antibody Discovery Module provide an end-to-end cloud solution that enables researchers to easily perform complicated tasks such as clustering, phylogeny, and prediction of exposed liabilities in a secure and scalable environment. With the addition ofthese new tools, researchers can now expand their candidate pool and improve their antibody selection.
