MPS Antibody Discovery

The industry leader in discovering antibodies against GPCRs, ion channels, transporters, immuno-oncology targets, and other challenging membrane protein targets.

  • Functional antibodies
  • Large, diverse panels of antibody candidates
  • >95% Success rate in membrane protein antibody discovery

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Membrane proteins are notoriously difficult targets for antibody discovery.

We know how to work with them.
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How is our antibody discovery platform unique and tailored to membrane proteins?

Our unique technologies enable us to overcome obstacles associated with these complex targets. These technologies and techniques include Lipoparticle antigen presentation, DNA+Lipoparticle immunization, use of divergent species, microfluidic B-cell cloning, phage protocols optimized for membrane proteins, engineering and epitope mapping of membrane proteins, and membrane proteome-wide specificity testing.

MPS Antibody Discovery

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The MPS Antibody Discovery platform delivers functional and specific antibodies against therapeutic targets including GPCRs, ion channels, transporters, and immuno-oncology targets.

"Integral's technology platform for antibody discovery was uniquely suited to our needs. The degree to which Integral's team engaged with us on scientific direction and design was unexpected but extremely beneficial."

What makes our approach so successful for complex proteins?

A high-titer immune response is the most critical component of a successful antibody discovery campaign for complex targets. Our proprietary antigen engineering and immunization techniques are at the core of our 95% success rate in delivering antibodies against complex targets. Our isolation techniques then enable us to isolate valuable and rare monoclonal antibodies (MAbs).

High Titer Responses

Antigen Engineering

Using targeted high-throughput mutagenesis strategies, we engineer membrane proteins as needed to improve their surface expression and stability and to reduce toxicity. Highly expressed antigens result in higher titer immune responses.

Learn about our antigen engineering strategies

DNA+Lipoparticle Immunization

Our proprietary immunization protocols combine DNA immunization and antigen presentation on Lipoparticles with proprietary adjuvants. This antibody elicitation strategy ensures a robust immune response focused against the native extracellular regions of the protein.

Use of Divergent Species

We can immunize evolutionarily divergent species to obtain high-titer responses, even for highly conserved, poorly immunogenic targets. This strategy provides broad epitope diversity and favors generation of MAbs with dual specificity for human and rodent orthologs, thereby avoiding the need for surrogate MAbs for animal studies.

Rare MAb Isolation

Microfluidic B-cell Cloning

Our proprietary microfluidic B-cell cloning platform enables millions of B cells to be screened directly from immunized animals. This process allows us to isolate rare functional antibodies with native VH+VL pairing.

Phage Display using Lipoparticles

Our phage display protocols are specifically designed to isolate challenging antibodies against native membrane proteins embedded in a lipid bilayer. Using these strategies, we can isolate diverse panels of antibodies against membrane proteins with a success rate exceeding 95%.

What antibody discovery services do we offer?

Full MPS Antibody Discovery Services

Full antibody discovery services are available for customer-specified targets. We tailor our solutions to the challenges of your specific target to ensure success. We begin with antigen optimization, perform immunizations using proprietary protocols, and deliver validated IgG leads. We also offer functional screening, antibody humanization, affinity maturation, and epitope and paratope mapping services.

Antigen Optimization Services

We provide antigen optimization services for challenging protein targets, customizing our antigen engineering approaches to your protein target. Solutions may include a combination of rational and high-throughput mutagenesis strategies.

Antibody Engineering Services

We offer antibody engineering services to increase affinity, specificity, and stability. Our antibody engineering approaches are adapted to your goals and may include combinations of random, designed, and high-throughput mutagenesis strategies.

Featured Case Studies

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Integral Molecular used the MPS Antibody Discovery platform to find GLUT4 conformation specific antibodies

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Integral Molecular used the MPS Antibody Discovery platform to isolate CB1 antibodies

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We have discovered functional antibodies with agonist, antagonist, state-specific, and neutralizing activities against dozens of membrane protein targets.
See our antibody pipeline.

Frequently Asked Questions

1What is the MPS Antibody Discovery platform?
MPS Antibody Discovery is Integral Molecular’s proven platform for delivering lead panels of MAbs against complex membrane protein targets. Harnessing our full array of proprietary technologies, the MPS platform overcomes the challenges of working with membrane proteins to isolate, optimize, and characterize antibodies against otherwise intractable targets.
2What kinds of proteins can be targeted using the MPS Antibody Discovery platform?
The MPS Antibody Discovery platform has been successfully applied to every type of membrane protein, including GPCRs, ion channels, and transporters, as well as multi-subunit proteins and immuno-oncology targets. Our platform is specifically designed to overcome the challenges of targeting multipass membrane proteins that are highly conserved, toxic, or poorly expressed.
3Why is the MPS Antibody Discovery platform better than other strategies for generating MAbs against membrane proteins?
The MPS Antibody Discovery platform is specifically designed to overcome the many challenges of discovering antibodies against membrane protein targets. To overcome the poor expression and high toxicity of membrane proteins, we use proprietary vectors and targeted mutagenesis strategies to engineer targets for enhanced surface expression, trafficking, and stability. To deal with issues of limited immunogenicity and antibody diversity, we immunize divergent species using DNA and Lipoparticles. Our proven immunization strategy yields a robust, high-titer immune response, even against highly conserved proteins, and results in panels of antibodies that bind diverse epitopes. Finally, our optimized phage display and B-cell cloning techniques enable the isolation of rare agonist, antagonist, and state-dependent antibodies.
4Can your platform be used to discover functional antibodies?
Yes! Functional antibodies against membrane protein targets are often very rare and challenging antibodies to isolate, but are also of critical value for therapeutic development. Using our platform, we have isolated agonist, antagonist, and state-specific antibodies against complex membrane protein targets.
5How do you engineer membrane proteins for high expression?
Many membrane proteins are notoriously difficult to work with due to their low surface expression and high toxicity. We use proprietary vectors and targeted mutagenesis methods to engineer membrane proteins for enhanced surface expression, trafficking, and stability. Using these methods, we typically achieve expression levels of engineered targets in Lipoparticles that are 10- to 100-fold higher than wild-type levels. Importantly, our engineering strategies maintain the native extracellular structure of each membrane protein, ensuring that the antibody response to the engineered protein will recapitulate the wild-type immune response.
6What deliverables will I receive upon completion of a project?

The final deliverable of an MPS Antibody Discovery project is usually a panel of highly specific, diverse, and functional MAbs that meet the customer’s specifications. Using our MPS Antibody Discovery platform, we have a very high success rate (>95%) in delivering such MAb panels. In addition to the final deliverable, customers receive 4 progress reports during their MPS project:

      1. Target Expression Report – Summarizes target expression after engineering and the proposed immunization strategy
      2. Serum Reactivity Report – Summarizes the immune response of each animal to the target protein
      3. Clone Screen Report – Summarizes MAb selection results and the diversity of discovered MAbs
      4. Clone Reactivity Report – Summarizes target reactivity and the full sequence of each validated MAb. This report is provided simultaneously with 100 μg of purified, ready-to-use IgG of each validated MAb for customer testing
7Can you affinity mature and humanize the antibodies that you discover?
Our MPS Antibody Discovery platform typically results in the discovery of antibodies having low nM to high pM affinities. Integral Molecular offers additional services for antibody maturation (affinity/specificity) and humanization.
8Can I purchase the components of MPS separately, such as Lipoparticles?
Our MPS Antibody Discovery platform involves a number of proprietary components that are only available within partnerships, including our high-expressing engineered membrane proteins, proprietary adjuvants, optimized DNA immunization vectors, divergent animal (e.g. chicken) immunization protocols, phage display and B-cell cloning technologies specifically designed for membrane proteins, and antibody affinity maturation and humanization platforms. Our standard Lipoparticles are available to all customers, but Lipoparticles with engineered receptors are available only for partner projects.

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