SC6. Selection, Screening and Engineering for Affinity Reagents
THURSDAY 21 NOVEMBER, 17:30 - 20:30
Room 5C
ABOUT THIS COURSE: Biologics such as recombinant antibodies and alternative binding scaffolds are routinely used in a wide variety of applications from basic research to clinical indications. This success has led to the development of
a vast number of different selection, screening and engineering technologies for these molecules. This short course will give a comprehensive overview on different display technologies as well as screening approaches for the selection of specific
binders. In addition, it will discuss engineering strategies including affinity maturation and how to implement these strategies. Classical antibodies and antibody fragments as well alternative binding scaffolds will be covered.
WHAT YOU WILL LEARN
- Get an insight into different display technologies (Phage Display, Ribosome Display, Yeast Display), their advantages and their use
- Receive firsthand information about different screening technologies (high and medium throughput, plate-based vs. homogeneous assays, …) to identify specific binders
- Hear about validation techniques to investigate e.g. specificity, affinity, and recognized epitopes
- Learn how to engineer your binder with respect to high affinity or species cross-reactivity
INSTRUCTOR BIOGRAPHIES:
Nathalie George, PhD, Investigator III NIBR Biologics Center, Discovery Technologies Novartis Pharma AG
Nathalie George joined Novartis in 2006 as a Postdoc and is heading for 10 years a research laboratory within the NIBR
Biologics Center. Her team is responsible to generate therapeutic antibodies and antibody-fragments using diverse phage display libraries and various screening techniques, including next generation sequencing. She and her team successfully identified
and characterized high affinity antibodies against a broad variety of protein targets for diverse indications. Nathalie also used the phage display technique during her PhD in the group of Prof. Kai Johnsson at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology
in Lausanne (EPFL) in the development of a covalent protein labeling method.
Christoph Erkel, PhD, Associate Director, Discovery Alliances & Technologies, MorphoSys AG
As a Project Team Leader for the partnered antibody discovery at MorphoSys, Dr. Erkel is responsible for the identification, characterization,
and optimization of therapeutic antibodies using MorphoSys’ proprietary phage display libraries and associated technologies. Prior to this, he was leading a team dedicated to engineer and fine-tune lead antibody candidates in more than 20 therapeutic
programs. Dr. Erkel has a strong background in synthetic biology. He started his career as Project Team Leader at Sloning BioTechnology, where he was responsible for de novo syntheses of numerous customized DNA libraries for antibodies and
other scaffolds. He received his PhD in Microbiology from the Philipps-University Marburg.