Kymouse™ Platform
Proprietary antibody platform
Kymouse™ is an advanced state of the art drug discovery system capable of rapidly generating an exceptionally broad diversity of fully human antibody drugs against today’s challenging disease targets.
Kymab has developed an extensive portfolio of intellectual property and is applying proprietary gene manipulation and ES cell technologies to create the first transgenic human monoclonal antibody platform capable of exceeding the diversity of antibodies produced in humans Kymouse™. Kymab is creating multiple strains of Kymouse™, each with its own diversity profile which will result in a broader range of mAbs than immunising a single mouse strain.
Kymouse HK™ is the first strain of the Kymouse™ platform in use at Kymab in drug discovery and is now available to partners. Other strains include Kymouse HL™, Kymouse HKL™; Kymouse KO™; Kymouse KI™; Kymouse Supra™.
The features of Kymouse™ are designed to overcome the limitations of previous transgenic human antibody strains and allow the rapid identification and development of high affinity, selective, potent and fully human monoclonal
antibody drugs.
- Multi-strain, in vivo mAb discovery platform
- Reproduces and enhances human Ig gene diversity
- Includes lambda light chain VJ repertoire (40% used in humans)
- Retains normal mouse B-cell signalling and maturation
- Correct Ig isotypes, class switching and somatic hypermutation
- No requirement for extensive antibody engineering of variable regions as selected leads are already optimised in vivo
- Kymouse KO™ custom target knock-out on Kymouse™ background to improve antibody response to conserved targets
- Kymouse KI™ custom human target knock-in for early in vivo proof of concept
- Kymouse Supra-S™ strains with differing gene repertoires
- Insertion technology, not random transgenesis
- In vivo maturation and selection allows candidates to advance rapidly
The Kymouse™ platform will encompass the full functional repertoire of human antibody variable genes. In addition to the enhanced diversity resulting from the extensive human V-region gene repertoire of Kymouse™, antibodies created also benefit from the normal process of in vivo somatic hypermutation. This further increases antibody diversity and optimises the affinity and biophysical properties of the resulting mature antibodies.
Unlike many transgenic “humanised” mice or rats, where human genes are randomly inserted into the genome, Kymouse™ strains have the human immunoglobulin genes inserted precisely into the relevant mouse locus, thus conserving normal control of gene expression and maximising genetic stability.