Abzena Strengthens Specialized Bioassay Offering Through Access Agreement with Major Cell Line Depository

Abzena plc, the life sciences group providing services and technologies to enable the discovery, design, development and manufacture of biopharmaceutical products, has signed an agreement to access a major cell line depository.

The agreement with an unnamed institution will allow Abzena access to cell lines representing multiple different species, tissue types and genetic disorders. This removes the lengthy process of negotiating individual cell line licences for Abzena and its customers.

The positive impact for customers will be a more streamlined development of specialised bioassays. It will be able to provide faster, more comprehensive and more efficient functional characterisation, lead selection and potency assay development for its customers’ novel biologic drug candidates.

Dr. Campbell Bunce, SVP, Scientific Operations, commented:

“Securing access to this cell bank will be a major benefit to both us and our customers. We will be able to offer broader capabilities for evaluating and testing our customers’ drug candidates to help advance the next generation of biopharmaceuticals.”

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About Abzena

Abzena provides proprietary technologies and complementary services to enable the development and manufacture of biopharmaceutical products.

The term ‘ABZENA Inside’ is used by Abzena to describe products that have been created using its proprietary technologies and are being developed by its partners, and include Composite Human Antibodies™ and ThioBridge™ Antibody Drug Conjugates (ADCs). Abzena has the potential to earn future licence fees, milestone payments and/or royalties on ‘ABZENA Inside’ products.

Abzena offers the following services and technologies across its principal sites in Cambridge (UK), San Diego, and Bristol, Pennsylvania:

• Biology research studies, including immunogenicity assessment of candidate biopharmaceutical products and bioassay development
• Protein engineering to create humanized antibodies and deimmunised therapeutic proteins
• Cell line development for the manufacture of recombinant proteins and antibodies
• Contract process development and GMP manufacture of biopharmaceuticals, including monoclonal antibodies and recombinant proteins for preclinical and clinical studies
• Contract synthetic chemistry and bioconjugation research services, focused on antibody-drug conjugates
• Proprietary site-specific conjugation technologies and novel payloads for ADC development
• GMP manufacturer of ADC linkers, payloads & combined linker-payloads
• GMP analytical services for biopharmaceutical manufacturing projects

For more information, visit www.abzena.com

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180313005183/en/

Abzena plcJohn Burt, CEOCampbell Bunce, SVP, Scientific OperationsMin Park, Global Head of MarketingJoseph Reeds, Marketing [e-mail] PartnersMelanie Toyne [e-mail]