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RAbD Biotech Presents at 1st Pitch Life Sciences-Philadelphia-September 16, 2014

Reporter: Stephen J. Williams, PhD

RAbD is a new biotechnology company founded by Fox  Chase Cancer Center investigators Gregory Adams, Ph.D., Matthew Robinson, Ph.D. and Roland Dunbrack, Ph.D. that is focused on the knowledge-based design of antibodies that bind to key functional, often highly conserved and difficult to target epitopes. We are using homology modeling, crystal structures, protein docking and design software and algorithms to drive combinatorial sampling of CDRs to computationally design new antibodies and then express, validate and perform further design in an iterative manner.Brian Smith, Ph.D., MBA is RAbD Biotech’s Business Development Lead.

Contact information for RAbD Biotech:

Website  http://rabdbiotech.com/

LinkedIn

Twitter @RAbDBiotech

The overall goal of RAbD is to

“drug the undruggable”

The company using in silico design methods to design to produce novel antibodies and biomimetics. The company is developing a first in class biomimetic, RaD-003, for the treatment of ovarian cancer.  Ovarian  cancer is one of the most deadly of all women’s cancers, with very low 5 year survival rates.  An expected 22,000 US women a year will be diagnosed and expected 16,000 will die every year.  Cisplatin/paclitaxel therapy is only approved and effective chemotherapy for ovarian cancer yet resistance develops quickly and is common. RaD-003  targets the MISII receptor (Mullerian Inhibiting Substance Type II Receptor), which is expressed on ovarian cancer cells but not on normal ovarian epithelium.

It has been shown that activation of this receptor by the Mullerian Inhibiting Substance (MIS) has antitumor activity in ovarian cancer.

The MISII receptor had been considered undruggable as

• MIS is too expensive and difficult to produce
• previous attempts to develop therapeutic antibodies ot MISIIR have proven difficult

Therefore, the company used their computational platform to produce a “first in class” chimeric biomimetic to more effectively target and activate MISIIR.

For  more information about this meeting and the Mid-Atlantic Bioangels and 1st Pitch please see posting on this site