Get your free personalized podcast brief

We scan new podcasts and send you the top 5 insights daily.

The current success of bi-specific antibodies is not the final stage of antibody therapy. CEO Errik Anderson views it as an iterative learning process. Insights from today's drugs will reveal new unmet needs, leading to the development of next-generation therapies like tri-specifics or different bi-specifics, continuing a decades-long innovation cycle.

Related Insights

To overcome the industry bottleneck of few validated solid tumor targets (15-20), Memo analyzes tumor-infiltrating B-cells from patients with superior outcomes. This approach aims to identify unique antibody-target pairs, unlocking new biological pathways for next-generation therapies like ADCs and CAR-Ts.

Contrary to the popular belief that antibody development is a bespoke craft, modern methods enable a reproducible, systematic engineering process. This allows for predictable creation of antibodies with specific properties, such as matching affinity for human and animal targets, a feat once considered a "flight of fancy."

Tackling monumental challenges, like creating a biologic effective against 800+ HIV variants, is not a single-shot success. It requires multiple iterations on an advanced engineering platform. Each cycle of design, measurement, and learning progressively refines the molecule, making previously impossible therapeutic goals achievable.

The debate isn't about peptides replacing antibodies but about combining them. The future lies in hybrid therapeutics, such as grafting peptides into antibody CDRs or creating fusions that use a peptide for optimal target binding and an antibody scaffold for effector functions, half-life extension, and stability.

The future of medicine isn't about finding a single 'best' modality like CAR-T or gene therapy. Instead, it's about strategic convergence, choosing the right tool—be it a bispecific, ADC, or another biologic—based on the patient's specific disease stage and urgency of treatment.

Beyond sheer scale, China's innovation leads in complex, next-generation drug modalities like ADCs and bispecifics. Chinese biotechs now account for roughly one-third of the global Phase 1 and 2 pipelines for these advanced therapies, indicating a shift from iteration on established targets to leadership in new technology platforms.

As biologics evolve into complex multi-specific and hybrid formats, the number of design parameters (valency, linkers, geometry) becomes too vast for experimental testing. AI and computational design are becoming essential not to replace scientists, but to judiciously sample the enormous design space and guide engineering efforts.

In oncology R&D, a successful two-drug combination isn't the final goal but the new standard of care to build upon. Researchers immediately begin planning for "triplets"—adding a third agent to the successful doublet—demonstrating a relentless, forward-looking strategy to incrementally improve patient outcomes.

The long history of now-commonplace technologies like monoclonal antibodies serves as a crucial reminder for the biotech industry. What appears to be an overnight success is often the culmination of decades of hard, incremental scientific work, highlighting the necessity of patience and long-term perspective.

When asked about complex antibodies like ADCs and bispecifics, GSK's CSO emphasizes that extending a drug's duration is a primary innovation. He highlights a severe asthma treatment dosed just twice a year as a prime example of creating significant patient value before adding further engineering complexity.

Biopharma's Antibody Evolution: Today's Bi-Specifics Are a Stepping Stone to Future Tri-Specifics, Not an End-Point | RiffOn