Introduction

Immunotherapies have dramatically changed the natural history of several cancer types. However, due to the paucity of viable tumor antigens discovered by the standard target-first approach, only few antibody-based drugs have entered into clinical use. Our iRASP platform allows to unbiasedly identify tumor-specific therapeutic antibodies, without prior knowledge of their target antigens.

Technical features

iRASP (in vivo Recombinant Antibody-Screening Platform) is a unique platform that relies on antibody phage display library, in vivo screenings and next generation sequencing (NGS) to discover new therapeutic antibodies for cancer patients. It is a fast and cost-effectiveness platform that allows to in vivo isolate tumor-binding phage antibodies directly from tumor-bearing mice, and then shortlist the selected in vivo tumor-binders on the basis of their tumor specificity, thanks to a reliable and robust prioritization process. iRASP has been successfully validated in refractory T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (T-ALL), but it can be tailored and applied to virtually any tumor type for the development of new and more effective immunotherapies for cancer patients.

Possible Applications

• Cancer immunotherapies (i.e. naked therapeutic antibody, immuno-cytokine, bispecific antibody, CAR-T therapy).

Advantages

• In vivo selection of antibodies against patient-derived xenografts (PDXs);
• In vitro antibody engineering for optimization of the antibody format;
• Discovery of new tumor antigens endowed with validated antigenicity;
• Great adaptation to different phage display libraries and diverse tumor types.