Facility of ESBATech
Zurich |
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Corporate profile
Founded in 1998 as a spin out of the University of Zurich, ESBATech is committed to becoming one of the leading developers of fully human antibody fragments for therapeutic applications. The company applies its proprietary, fully human single-chain antibody frameworks to generate product candidates against targets of clinical relevance. ESBATech is focused on delivering high concentrations of its therapeutic antibody fragments to the targeted sites, in combination with extremely low systemic load, in order to achieve low risk of systemic drug reactions using topical and local delivery.
Antibody Fragments
Antibody fragments are an emerging area of focus within the monoclonal antibody market and represent a new class of therapeutics. Due to their smaller molecular size, antibody fragments have a number of advantages over whole antibodies. Antibody fragments comprise only the naturally occurring antigen-binding pocket of the monoclonal antibody, and not the Fc part that is required to trigger an immune response. This new class of new products opens applications which are advantageous compared to monoclonal antibodies in indications where no such immune response is required. Thus, endogenous proteins are preferred targets for these new biologics.
Antibody fragments are regarded as an attractive format for therapeutic interventions. However, limitations of this protein format have prevented some drug development companies from succeeding in preclinical and clinical development. The main limitations are very low stability of conventional antibody fragments linked to poor yield for production, high tendency to aggregate linked to immunogenicity and very short half-life in the blood stream.
The first and only antibody fragment approved to date is Lucentis® (ranibizumab) from Genentech (market approval 2006). Lucentis is used to neutralize endogenous VEGF for wet age-related macular degeneration (AMD). Lucentis is administered monthly by intra-ocular injection. These injections can lead to serious injuries and infections. |
