The National Institute for Bioprocessing Research and Training (NIBRT), Ireland and GE Healthcare Life Sciences announced a joint research collaboration to drive advances in technologies for the development and functional analysis of therapeutic antibodies, protein-based drugs that are increasingly used to treat diseases such as cancer, rheumatoid arthritis and multiple sclerosis.

The NIBRT and GE Healthcare are investing $0.5 million the first year in this project, which is planned to run for two years. The goal of the collaboration is to develop new, robust and reproducible biochemical assays for the analysis of the biological activity of therapeutic monoclonal antibodies. Current industry-standard techniques for research and manufacture often rely on cell-based assays, which can be non-quantitative, labour intensive and highly variable.

The collaboration will combine NIBRT’s leading expertise in glycobiology and novel bioanalytical techniques with GE Healthcare’s capabilities in protein-protein interaction analysis, particularly the company’s Biacore SPR technology.

Welcoming the collaboration, Professor Ian Marison, NIBRT interim director said: “We are delighted with this research collaboration with GE Healthcare, which will allow NIBRT to apply its bioanalytical expertise to develop novel analytical platforms for the determination of monoclonal antibody biological activity. We look forward to working with GE Healthcare on this exciting project and developing our relationship further over time.”

The research will be led by NIBRT’s Principal Investigator and global leader in glycobiology, Professor Pauline Rudd, in conjunction with researchers from GE Healthcare Life Sciences laboratories in Uppsala, Sweden.