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Animal-health antibody programs need the same engineering as human ones. Who actually runs it?

Abwiz Bio does. We discover and engineer antibodies for veterinary therapeutics and diagnostics, including feline, using the same platform behind our human therapeutic work — patented WizAmp™ phage display for discovery and STEM™ for engineering. In our human therapeutic programs STEM™ has driven leads from low-nanomolar to 4.4 pM K_D, up to 1,300-fold, and the same campaign that raises affinity also applies thermostability, polyreactivity and developability filters. Animal-health programs run on shorter timelines and tighter cost-of-goods than human ones, which makes getting affinity, expression and developability out of one selection campaign rather than three sequential ones the practical difference.

What is different about a veterinary program

The biology is the same; the constraints are not.

• Cost of goods dominates. A veterinary therapeutic has to be manufacturable at a price the market supports, which makes expression titer and developability first-order design parameters rather than late-stage problems. An antibody that titers poorly is not merely inconvenient — it can make the product unviable.
• Species adaptation is required. A repeat-dose therapeutic must present as self to the target species, which means the framework and constant regions have to be adapted — felinized, or matched to whichever species the program targets — while binding is preserved. This is the same problem as humanization, solved with the same tools.
• Reagents are scarcer. Species-specific secondary antibodies, standards and assay components are far less available than for human or mouse work, so more of the characterization has to be built rather than bought.
• Timelines are compressed. Development budgets are smaller and calendars shorter, which rewards engineering approaches that address several properties in a single selection rather than optimizing one axis at a time.

What we do

Discovery against veterinary targets

Where you have a target but no antibody, we immunize and build immune phage libraries with our patented WizAmp™ method — 5×10⁹–10¹⁰ for our rabbit campaigns — then pan against recombinant protein, peptide, or native and transfected cells. For veterinary targets that cannot be expressed as clean recombinant protein — multi-pass membrane proteins in particular — cell-based panning on native antigen is frequently the route that yields functional clones. Where neutralization or blocking is the endpoint, functional discovery recovers a diverse panel clustered by HCDR3 lineage so functionally distinct clones can be tested rather than a single dominant epitope.

Affinity maturation

STEM™ runs in three stages: single-CDR variant libraries selected mildly to collect functional clones; light- and heavy-chain CDR pools combined separately under stringent selection; then both chains merged into one library under the most stringent conditions. CDR positions are designed from human antibody amino-acid usage using a local AlphaFold instance plus germline and structural bioinformatics, with thermostability and polyreactivity filters at every stage. In our human therapeutic programs this has reached picomolar affinity from low-nanomolar starting points, up to 1,300-fold improvement.

Species adaptation

We graft CDRs onto the target-species framework and restore binding-critical Vernier and interface residues by back-mutation, then use STEM™ to recover any affinity lost in the graft. Our humanization success rate is 15/15 across the mouse, rabbit and VHH programs we have run, and the same grafting and back-mutation methodology applies to felinization and other veterinary speciation. See mouse humanization for the detailed workflow.

Manufacturability

Because cost of goods matters more here, expression rescue and developability optimization are usually run as part of the engineering campaign rather than after it. In one of our programs expression rescue delivered more than 10-fold yield improvement with function retained, against in-house transient titers of 71–91 mg/L.

Formats and applications

You receive

• Species-specific maturation and optimization data
• Full VH/VL or VHH sequences for every delivered clone
• Recombinant IgG in the constant region format your program requires
• ELISA and flow cytometry data; BLI kinetics optional after IgG purification
• Expression titer and developability data where manufacturability is in scope
• No downstream royalties, flexible commercial terms, and stage-gated approval before each next step

Frequently asked questions

Do you work on antibodies for animal health?

Yes. Abwiz Bio has affinity-matured and engineered antibodies across animal species including feline, supporting veterinary therapeutic and diagnostic leads. The discovery and engineering platform is the same one behind our human therapeutic work: WizAmp phage display for discovery and STEM for engineering.

Can you felinize an antibody?

Yes. Species adaptation follows the same methodology as humanization: CDRs are grafted onto a target-species framework, binding-critical Vernier and interface residues are restored by back-mutation, and STEM affinity maturation recovers any binding lost in the graft. Across the mouse, rabbit and VHH humanization programs we have run, our success rate is 15 out of 15.

How much affinity improvement is achievable?

In our human therapeutic programs, STEM affinity maturation has driven leads from low-nanomolar to 4.4 pM, up to 1,300-fold improvement. Each stage carries thermostability and polyreactivity filters, so the matured clone is assessed for developability as it is matured, rather than merely for tighter binding.

Cost of goods is critical for our program. Can you engineer for manufacturability?

Yes, and for veterinary programs we recommend doing so inside the same campaign rather than afterwards. In one program expression rescue produced more than 10-fold yield improvement with function retained, and developability optimization addresses aggregation, high-concentration viscosity, sequence liabilities, PTM susceptibility and polyreactivity on the same library.

We only have a target, not an antibody. Can you start there?

Yes. We run de novo discovery from your target antigen, cells or tissue, including cell-based panning for membrane proteins that cannot be expressed as recombinant protein, and functional or neutralizing discovery where blocking activity rather than binding is the endpoint.

How do commercial terms work for veterinary programs?

Terms are agreed before the project starts and carry no downstream royalties. Projects are stage-gated, so you approve each step before the next begins. Contact info@abwizbio.com with your target or lead sequence for a scoped quote.