Tag: bispecific antibodies
Company News: Merus Announces the Full Validation of Its MeMo® Transgenic Mouse for Common Light Chain Human Antibodies
Merus B.V., a biopharmaceutical company focused on innovative human antibody therapeutics, announced today the full validation of its transgenic MeMo® mouse for common light chain human antibodies. The MeMo® mouse creates human antibody diversity using a large repertoire of human heavy chains paired with a common human light chain.
“Over the last year, we have immunized MeMo® mice with half a dozen antigens and analyzed the immune response,” said Mark Throsby, COO at Merus. “We are extremely excited by the performance of the MeMo® technology; serum antibody titers as well as size, diversity, functionality and developability of antibody panels are comparable to those of wild type mice.”
“In MeMo®, a single human light chain drives the generation of a normal B cell compartment as well as supports a robust immune response,” said Ton Logtenberg, CEO and founder of Merus. “The large and diverse panels of high-quality human antibodies that we retrieve from MeMo® show that this platform is comparable to the best-in-class transgenic platforms using diversified heavy and light chains.”
Because of the common light chain, MeMo®-derived antibodies can be immediately used to rapidly generate thousands of bispecific antibodies (Biclonics™) and combinations of antibodies (Oligoclonics®) for functional screening. Merus has shown that the quality and diversity of common light chain antibodies drives the success of identifying Biclonics™ with unprecedented potencies for application in oncology. The MeMo® mouse is available for licensing.
Company News: Merus Announces Appointment of Jason Avery as Chief Business Officer
Merus B.V., a biopharmaceutical company focused on multispecific human antibody therapeutics, announced today that Jason Avery has been appointed as Chief Business Officer.
With a professional background as Head of Business Development at Affitech A/S and Chief Business Officer at Cambridge Antibody Technology, Jason Avery brings extensive industry experience to Merus.
“Jason comes to Merus with a wealth of experience in Business Development, in particular in the antibody space, and we are delighted to have him join the team,” said Dr Ton Logtenberg, CEO of Merus B.V. “As our multispecific human antibody platforms have matured and consistently yield lead candidates for clinical development, Jason’s expertise will be invaluable to reach our ambitious business goals.”
“Merus is one of the most impressive companies in the antibody technology and product space,” said Jason Avery. “The combination of MeMo®, the common light-chain transgenic mouse, and Merus’ antibody format technology facilitates unprecedented ease in the discovery, development and manufacturing of bispecific antibodies. I look forward to progressing the commercial success of Merus´ discriminative pipeline of owned and partnered antibody products. I am very excited to be joining such an experienced management team.”