Hi everyone:
First I want to say that I totally agree with PB when he states that anti-idiotypic responses to CAT's "100%" human antibodies could occur and would lead to tolerance. I have discussed this point at length with Kevin Johnson at CAT and at least as far as their anti TGFB and anti TNF mAbs go, they have not seen any anti-idiotypic responses during phase I or phase II clinical trials. Long term data will provide a more complete answer to this question but it is still possible to state with confidence that in term of immunogenicity the anti TNF reagents rank from best (least immunogenic) to worst (most immunogenic) as such: CAT's anti TNF/Enbrel>Celltech's anti TNF>JNJ's anti TNF. Why JNJ ever purchased Centocore is still a mystery to me.
I also would like to post a section from the May issue of Genetic Engineering News (http://www.genengnews.com/) that discusses the genomics arm of CAT. The title of the article was European Biotech, Although Younger than U.S. Cousin, Produces Array of Similar Breadth. I don't usually like to post published material but since it is very difficult to obtain quality information on CAT in general and in particular their genomics division, I decided to post it.
The section reads as follows:
Another company with a dual genomics/bioinformatics nature is Cambridge Antibody Technology (CAT; Melbourn, U.K.). The primary mission of the company is drug discovery and the development of human antibody drugs, which can he used therapeutically in specific disease indications. In March, CAT announced a major alliance with Wyeth Ayerst (Philadelphia), a division of American Home Products (Radnor, PA), for up to $70 million for CAT's ProAb and ProxiMol functional genomics technology and "CONTINUITY" bioinformatics software. CAT was the winner of the 1998 U.K. Prix Galien Research Award for its phage antibody technology, exemplified by the development of a human monoclonal antibody, 6B1, to be used to prevent scarring following eye surgery.
CAT has developed a very strong internal bioinformatics infrastructure and has very aggressively implemented state-of-the-art technologies. Functional genomics can be viewed simply as biology performed at high-throughput levels. There are significant challenges, however, in making high-throughput discovery
processes work productively," says Simon M. Brocldehurst, Ph.D., head of bioinformatics. "Our two main challenges are generating data and subsequently deriving and exploiting information and knowledge from the data."
With Dr. Brocklehurst's expertise in bioinformatics, Java, XML (extensible markup language), CORBA© and Oracle©, CAT has made substantial progress in integrating and automating its high-throughput technologies. First, his team brought all of the publicly available databases in house and integrated them into a relational database. For their ProAb technology, they then developed a substantially automated process to mine the databases for specific ESTs of interest, to design peptides, to automatically set up robotic equiptment, to e-mail chemists with specific instructions, to track high-throughput screening procedures and to forward the output to a cellular pathologist who is studying stained tissue slides.
Using proprietary natural language processing, ontologies and vocabularies, computer software has been written to distill the significant findings out of the voice recognition transcripts generated by the cellular pathologists and to store that value-added information automatically. Although the last step requiring human intervention is the rate-determining step, it is also the step where the highest value of information is obtained. CAT's current production capacity is about 1,000 antibody profiles generated per month.
Like Human Genome Sciences, CAT has developed an internal state-of-the-art bioinformatics infrastructure without outsourcing, licensing or subscribing to third-party products or services. Kevin Johnson, Ph.D., research director, puts this into perspective by saying, "In the beginning, we would have liked to bring in at least some bioinformatics from the outside to help out, but what we needed wasn't available. We developed our internal bioinformatics capabilities because we simply couldn't wait. There was not a choice-we had to do it." (Please excuse any mistakes made by my OCR software).
I am still researching CAT but I must say that they have impressed me thus far with solid science, a well rounded portfolio of technology, good decision making and business strategy. The market maker for CMBHF is a thief, however. |
