Developing Therapeutic Antibodies for Pets

Project Information

CAESAR

Grant agreement ID: 886470

DOI

10.3030/886470

Project closed

EC signature date 8 November 2019

Start date 1 November 2019

End date 30 April 2020

Funded under

• INDUSTRIAL LEADERSHIP - Innovation In SMEs

Total cost

€ 71 429,00

EU contribution

€ 50 000,00

Coordinated by

ADIVO GMBH
Germany

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - CAESAR (Developing Therapeutic Antibodies for Pets)

Reporting period: 2019-11-01 to 2020-04-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Chronic inflammatory diseases in pets are poorly managed causing immense emotional and financial distress to pet owners. Available therapies today rely on anti-inflammatory drugs that are ineffective and often lead to the pet being put down due to a failure in easing sufferance. On the other hand, antibody therapies, commonly used in human medicine, are still in their infancy in veterinary healthcare. Current antibodies used are not of pet origin and therefore potentially trigger immune responses in pets, making the therapy ineffective and causing further health complications.

CAESAR is the first of a kind synthetic canine phage-display library to generate therapeutic antibodies for dogs. From this complete library we can select fully canine therapeutic antibodies to treat chronic inflammatory diseases in dogs. This ground-breaking therapeutic innovation will allow targeted and effective antibody treatment for chronic conditions, eliminating immunogenicity complications and replacing the poorly performing anti-inflammatory drugs used nowadays.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

During this feasibility study adivo carried out a technical, financial and commercial analysis for the CAESAR project and designed a robust technical development and business plan for the commercialisation of the innovation. By successfully completing the preliminary analyses, we have confirmed that antibodies binding to the target can be satisfactorily isolated from our library, thus confirming the technical viability of our project. Our commercialisation strategy was fine-tuned and adjusted based on the results from the in-depth market analysis carried out to confirm commercial feasibility. Furthermore, we analysed the cost of production of antibodies from our library, by identifying several suitable protein-producing companies in Europe and Asia. The financial projections confirmed the project is viable from a financial point of view as leading to cumulative revenues in 5 years of over €51 million.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

During the last few months, we isolated antibodies against one promising protein related to chronic inflammatory conditions in dog from our library, and converted them into IgG format, for a total of 27 unique-sequence clones. Our financial analysis confirmed that our innovation will have a great impact, with a payback time on the first commercialisation year.

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