Sortera Bio Founders Publish Breakthrough Deep Screening Technology for Rapid Discovery of Biologics

Cambridge, UK, 9th October 2023 – Sortera Bio, a pioneering biotechnology startup founded by Dr Ben Porebski and Prof Phil Holliger, today announced the publication of a groundbreaking study detailing a revolutionary approach to antibody discovery. Their innovative method, termed Deep Screening, not only significantly reduces development time and cost, but also generates the essential data required for de novo design, considered the ultimate goal in antibody discovery, enabling the creation of novel antibodies from scratch.

Developed while at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB), Deep Screening leverages next generation sequencing technology to enable the rapid identification of high affinity antibodies against clinically relevant targets. By integrating Illumina’s massively parallel sequencing with ribosome display, this method allows for the simultaneous testing of millions of antibody-antigen interactions within a single experiment.

The authors found that Deep Screening was able to achieve remarkable results in just three days, identifying leads that previously took months to characterise. Against a real-world therapeutic target, a 2000-fold improvement in affinity, and a staggering 35,000-fold increase in potency, was obtained with Deep Screening compared to traditional methods. Furthermore, the method generated extensive datasets that were used to train machine learning models to predict novel, high affinity antibodies, by teaching the models to “speak antibody”.

“We are thrilled to have developed this groundbreaking technology, which has the potential to revolutionise the field of antibody discovery”, said Ben Porebski, co-founder of Sortera Bio. “Our team’s work demonstrates the power of Deep Screening in accelerating the discovery of high affinity antibodies, and we look forward to continuing to develop and apply this technology at Sortera Bio”.

This breakthrough is a result of the MRC LMB’s collaboration with AstraZeneca under the Blue Sky Collaboration initiative, supported by UKRI and EMBO. The technology builds on LMB’s legacy in antibody innovation, with applications across various diseases, offering unparalleled efficiency and cost-effectiveness for the pharmaceutical industry.

Porebski, B.T., Balmforth, M., Browne, G. et al. Rapid discovery of high-affinity antibodies via massively parallel sequencing, ribosome display and affinity screening. Nat. Biomed. Eng 8, 214–232 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41551-023-01093-3

About Sortera Bio

Sortera Bio Ltd is a Cambridge UK-based biotechnology company based on intellectual property developed at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology. Sortera is focused on accelerating the discovery of biologics via its proprietary Deep Screening platform and is dedicated to delivering transformative solutions in biologics discovery to meet the needs of patients worldwide.

Contact: hello@sortera.bio
https://sortera.bio
Follow Sortera Bio on LinkedIn