SCoRe: Self-Scaling Continuous Recovery for Exceptionally Low-Cost Antibodies

Christopher Love with Hadley Sikes of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the U.S. will develop a biomanufacturing platform for low-cost production of monoclonal antibodies based on a multidomain synthetic protein enabling both capture and purification of the antibody in a chromatography-free process. The synthetic protein will concentrate and recover antibodies in a single, mobile fluid phase, based on studies of the liquid-liquid phase transition of proteins into condensates that occur naturally in key cellular processes. They will design and test protein agents for affinity-based capture and condensation of monoclonal antibodies including the antimalarial MAM01, assess the co-expression of the synthetic protein and the target antibody product in a microbial expression system, and determine conditions for continuous recovery of the product. They will also create models of the technical and economic factors required for low-cost production from either microbial or mammalian cell expression systems.

This grant is one of three grants that are funded and administered by LifeArc.