On March 17, 2014 Amorfix Life Sciences reported that it has entered into a collaboration with Trellis Bioscience to develop antibodies against misfolded CD38 protein as a treatment for hematological malignancies including leukemia and lymphoma (Press release Amorfix Life Sciences, MAR 17, 2014, View Source [SID:1234500301]).
Trellis is a private, South San Francisco-based therapeutic antibody company formed around a breakthrough discovery platform capable of isolating therapeutic grade antibodies directly from the blood cells of humans. The Company’s discovery platform, called CellSpotTM, uses computerized microscopy to drastically miniaturize a multiplexed antigen binding assay capable of characterizing millions of individual antibody producing B cells. Hence, CellSpot enables discovery of very rare high quality human antibodies usually not detectable with standard techniques.
Amorfix’s ProMIS Discovery technology identifies disease specific epitopes (DSE’s) that are present only on diseased cells. Together, the complementary technologies will enable the companies to isolate and develop fully human therapeutic antibodies that will target only cancer cells and not healthy ones. Under the terms of the collaboration, Amorfix will have an exclusive option to develop any resulting antibodies.