The SymSelect™ functional lead selection platform is a unique, flexible and high throughput method for rational testing and ranking of thousands of antibody mixtures with regard to their biological activity. The SymSelect™ platform rapidly identifies optimal antibody mixtures and significantly reduces the time from antibody discovery to lead selection.
 

The number of unique mixtures that can be generated from even a relatively small number of monoclonal antibodies can be extremely high, and it is challenging to identify the most favourable mixture. Symphogen has met this challenge by developing the SymSelect™ functional lead selection platform. The idea behind SymSelect™ is to test and compare individual monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) and all possible combinations of mixtures of 2 or 3 of these antibodies in functional assays. The output of the initial analysis is a ranking of the mAbs and mixtures according to their efficacy in the functional assay. Larger, more complex mixtures can be identified by repeating the SymSelect™ procedure with larger mixtures containing a combination of the best mixtures of 2 or 3 antibodies as building blocks, thereby allowing efficacy comparisons of mixtures of 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 or 9 antibodies. At this stage, additional information is included, such as target and epitope bins, to guide the selection of 10-20 lead candidate mixtures, which are then evaluated for efficacy and potency in additional functional assays. The output of the SymSelect™ procedure is typically 3-4 lead candidate mixtures for further in vivo evaluation. Previous experience with SymSelect™ has shown that large and diverse antibody repertoires are a prerequisite for successful identification of antibody mixtures with superior activity to monoclonal antibodies. The Symplex™ antibody discovery technology is thus a perfect match for the SymSelect™ platform, as the Symplex™ technology delivers large repertoires of high quality mAbs. In addition, the SymSelect™ technology allows us to select antibodies based on target binding and sequence diversity and thus not be delayed by time-consuming epitope binning or mapping. 
 

By using SymSelect™, Symphogen can rapidly compare and rank a large number of antibodies and antibody mixtures to determine the most favorable composition of antibody drug candidates. Furthermore, SymSelect™ is a highly flexible platform that can be adapted to work with any functional assay that is compliant with 96- or 384-well formats, and it is possible to include other compounds (small molecules or biologics) as a component in the analyses to look for drug synergies. Thus, the SymSelect™ platform provides Symphogen with a unique method for rapid empirical determination of the optimal size and composition of an antibody drug candidate against an endogenous target or infectious disease agent of interest.