Absolute Antibody Receives £850K ($1.4M) Funding

Absolute Antibody Ltd, a life sciences company developing next generation engineered antibodies for biomedical research and diagnostics markets, has received £850K ($1.4 million) funding. The investment includes a £100K Smart proof-of-concept funding award from the Technology Strategy Board and £750K from the founders and a group of business angels.

The investment will be used to accelerate the growth of the business by building up its library of engineered antibodies and manufacturing capacity. The company has also announced the commercial launch of its suite of recombinant antibody services and catalogue of engineered antibody products, initially targeted at the research antibody market.

Absolute Antibody has developed a proprietary manufacturing platform based on transient transfection for the production of sequenced and engineered antibodies, AbsoluteAbs (AbAbs). These engineered antibodies provide a number of benefits over antibodies produced using traditional methods, including ultra-low batch-to-batch variability leading to improved reproducibility of results, and the ability to eliminate undesirable properties or add desirable features. For example, the binding potential for complement and Fc receptors can be eliminated to minimise background staining and provide cleaner results, while desirable features such as tags for detection and purification can be built into the AbAbs. The manufacture of AbAbs is fast, inexpensive and animal-free, with 100s of mgs generated within two weeks, versus up to three months required by traditional methods, enabling Absolute Antibody to offer vastly reduced time from order to delivery.

Dr Nick Hutchings, CEO of Absolute Antibody, said: "We would like to thank our investors for supporting the Company. The new funding allows us to accelerate the growth of our products and services. Absolute Antibody’s vision is to engineer antibodies that enable customers to achieve more reproducible and cleaner results, with new types of reagents and new formats. We believe Absolute Antibody will be at the forefront of the coming revolution in the £1.3 billion per year research antibody market.”

www.absoluteantibody.com