ESBATech is drug discovery company, exploiting its expertise in yeast technology for the development of therapeutic antibody fragments and the development of functional assays for small molecule screenings

Over the last couple of years, ESBATech has made the transition from a platform technology company into a product company that focuses on the development of its proprietary products. However, the company still aims to enter collaborations and strategic alliances with big pharma and biotech partners.

“This is a much more sustainable approach and allows us to exploit and validate the technology over a wider therapeutic area,” explained Dr Oliver Middendorp, responsible for business development at ESBATech. Examples of these include a successfully completed collaboration with Roche in the field of Alzheimer’s disease, and a collaboration with Viventia in the field of antibody engineering.

The company’s platform technologies include:

• selection of highly stable and soluble fully human single chain antibody fragments
• functional cell-based assays in yeast for inhibitors of secretases, proteases and receptor tyrosine kinases.

In-house product development is focusing on the development of single chain antibody fragments in oncology (glioblastoma), inflammation and Alzheimer’s disease. ESBATech expects to seek partners for these product candidates once clinical results are available.

ESBATech’s fragments have high stability and solubility.In addition, their smaller size affords an increased tissue penetration, an advantage in many indications. Since the antibody fragments are produced in microbial systems, they have a lower cost of production.

Local administration of fragments allows to apply the antibody in a targeted manner, which requires less overall protein and at the same time avoids systemic side effects. This approach also circumvents the short half-life due to renal clearance that small proteins normally have in circulation.

ESBATech’s screening approach differentiates the company from other platform-based discovery companies. Its yeast-based platform allows the ESBATech to look selectively at targets in eukaryotic cells with high specificity and at a lower cost.

The assays are clean and free of interference, allowing for rapid HTS screening of small molecule libraries to identify potent cell compatible inhibitors of specific receptor tyrosine kinases. In addition, the availability of a whole panel of established assays allows rapid establishment of a selectivity profile. The technology was recently very successfully validated in a collaboration with the Novartis oncology department.

ESBATech also has an internal receptor tyrosine kinase program, where it has screened libraries for inhibitors of Ephrin B4, which it is looking to license out.

These patented molecules have submicromolar IC50, potent cellular activity and high specificity. ESBATech is looking for partners to develop these compounds further for cancer therapy.

ESBATech, a spinout from the Institute of Molecular Biology, University of Zurich, was founded in September 1998 following its success in the ‘Venture 98’ business plan competition.

The company has raised 20 million Swiss francs from investors, including Novartis Venture Fund, Biomed Invest/HBM, VI Partners, BSI New Biomedical Frontiers and Innoventure (Credit Suisse).

Details at http://pharmalicensing.com/company/dispcompany/4611

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