PDLI is probably the leader at making mouse antibodies look like they're human, from the perspective of the human immune system. Founders are Cary Queen and Lawrence Korn. Korn is the business end. Queen is a math freak who was the driving force behind the algorithms for 3-D modeling. The company has been around for a long time. Some of their programs, IMO, are not well-conceived (e.g., anti-CMV). However, they hold many of the pivotal patents for the "humanization" of antibodies. Others, I believe, have been cross-licensed from Genentech and Celltech.
The Roche program in kidney transplants (anti-Tac) took forever to unfold. I was surprised when the data looked so strong. I was expecting good data, but not as good as it appeared to be. Therapeutic monoclonals was my business, and I'm sort of neutral on the pursuit of this field....... sounds better than it turns out to be for most of the old and tried ideas, but immune modulation should provide a viable target. PDLI also pivoted (early) around concepts from Lubert Stryer (Stanford), and I think that the company is still trying to make innovative conjugates and radioconjugates work.
It's been awhile since I looked at their programs. However, they are top notch, from a science perspective. It was heartening to see the anti-Tac data. There's probably a PDLI thread here at SI?
Cheers! Rick |
