Technology Overview

At the core of our technology is the ability to efficiently construct large and diverse libraries of recombinant vaccinia virus containing cDNAs of interest. We have over 10 years of experience creating recombinant cDNA libraries in vaccinia virus and hold strong domestic and foreign patent positions based on our strategies. We have leveraged this experience to create an expression platform suitable for high-throughput selection of heavy and light chain immunoglobulin combinations with desirable characteristics. We have also employed this platform for functional selection and identification of the targets of orphaned antibodies and cytotoxic T cells (immune molecules and cells of functional interest but for which the target is unknown).

ACTIVMAb® is our platform for selecting fully human, high-affinity, and high-specificity antibodies through de novo selection, affinity improvement or mouse to human conversion. ACTIVMAb® antibody discovery technology is the only large library-based antibody discovery technology that can efficiently express and select fully functional human monoclonal antibodies in mammalian cells. Antibodies are expressed as full length IgG, easing the transition to downstream validation and preferentially selecting for heavy and light combinations that express well in manufacturing cell lines.

  • Our vaccinia virus-based expression platform efficiently infects mammalian cells with cDNAs of interest in numbers suitable for large-scake screening
  • In vitro selection avoids tolerance related issues associated with selecting antibodies against human proteins that are conserved in mouse
  • Because we express antibodies as full length IgG, downstream reengineering is typically not required
  • Vaccinex has selected antibodies against many types of targets including multi-pass membrane proteins

We invite you to learn more about the various applications of our technology or contact us to learn about how we can help to address your specific discovery needs.

Documents of interest:

  • US20080167193A1 - In Vitro methods of producing and identifying immunoglobulin molecules in eukaryotic cells
  • Lethality-based selection of recombinant genes in mammalian cells: application to identifying tumor antigens.Smith ES, Mandokhot A, Evans EE, Mueller L, Borrello MA, Sahasrabudhe DM, Zauderer M.
    Nature Medicine. 2001 Aug;7(8):967-72.
  • Construction of cDNA libraries in vaccinia virus.
    Smith ES, Shi S, Zauderer M.
    Methods Mol Biol. 2004;269:65-76. Review.