Project iBodies, supported by IOCB Tech and i&i Prague, is focused on developing novel macromolecules designed to fully substitute antibodies in common biochemical methods. Recently, iBodies established a cooperation with the world´s largest non-profit organization focused on life-science research tools of all kinds – Ximbio.
Ximbio is a UK based technology-transfer company within the charity Cancer Research UK, which is the largest charitable funder of cancer research in the world. Ximbio’s goal is to make life science research tools widely and easily available all around the world (such as small molecule tool compounds, antibodies, cell lines, proteins, animal models). Ximbio can manage the whole commercialisation of these research tools on behalf of its partner research institutes (providing storage, production, quality control and execution of licence/sales agreements and transfer of material to its global network of both industry and academic scientists). Any revenue Ximbio generates is shared back to the iBodies inventors and their respective research institutes.
Including iBodies in their portfolio shows not only the quality of the technology, but again makes this unique, flexible platform available for even more laboratory applications all around the world.
In theory, iBodies synthetic antibodies can be custom designed towards any protein of interest (provided a ligand is known), tailored based on the intended applications and used in various methods such as ELISA, flow cytometry, confocal microscopy, Western Blotting, protein immobilization and immunoprecipitation methods. In general, these iBodies can target a specific protein such as neuraminidase, GCPII, HIV-1, FAP, CA-IX or can be used for broader spectra of proteins such as His-tagged or GST-tagged proteins.
Specifically, anti-neuraminidase iBody, anti-glutamate carboxypeptidase (GCPII) iBody, anti-HIV-1 protease iBody, anti-fibroblast activation protein (FAP) iBody, anti-carbonic anhydrase IX (CA-IX) iBody, anti-HIS tag iBody, anti-GST tag iBody and a negative control iBody are all available online now – HERE.