“We have already built a human antibody library of more than 100 billion types of antibodies.  In the future, a partnership with our company will be essential for domestic companies to develop human antibodies.”​

 

Young Woo Park, CEO of Y-Biologics, introduced the human antibody library as the core competitiveness of the company at a bio investment forum held at the Mirae Asset Daewoo headquarters in Yeouido-dong, Yeongdeungpo-gu, Seoul.

 

Novel antibody drugs are being developed immunotherapy based on the property of antibodies to specifically bind to a specific substance. Called second-generation protein drugs, antibody drugs are designed to exhibit high therapeutic efficacy, with the side effect of attacking normal cells – a problem exhibited by existing anticancer agents – minimized.

 

“With the release of Remicade, the first antibody drug, in in 1997, seven of the ten top-selling drugs in the world are currently antibody therapeutics. [...] Human antibodies, in particular, are garnering the most attention, and we have a proprietary technology to secure a library of human antibodies from immune cells derived from the bone marrow,” said CEO Park.

 

The CEO of Y-Biologics gained 14 years of experience in developing protein drugs as the head of an antibody therapeutics team at LG Life Sciences. Afterwards, he undertook multiple national projects for the development of novel antibody drugs at the Korea Research Institute of Bioscience and Biotechnology. Based on these experiences, he has been working on seven drug pipelines with the aim of building a human antibody library since the early 2000s.

 

“Y-Biologics has Korea’s one and only automated system capable of screening more than 10,000 human antibodies per day,” said CEO Park before emphasizing that the company has “proven its technology is comparable to those of global companies with the development of PD-1 and PDL-1 antibodies, which are immune checkpoint inhibitors that are currently in the spotlight.”

 

The pipelines that are being developed most quickly at Y-Biologics are YBL-006 and YBL007, which are antibodies targeting PD-1 and PDL-1, respectively. The development projects kicked off at the beginning of 2021, and the antibodies were produced in just four months. It has been confirmed that their performance is equivalent to that of existing antibody drugs.

 

Based on this experience, Y-Biologics plans to develop “Better PD-1 or PDL-1.” Non-clinical research is set to begin in the offing with respect to the bispecific antibodies, YBL-004 and YBL-005, that will have additional functions such as regulating cytokines, which are immune activating substances, aside from binding to PD-1 and PDL-1.

 

CEO Park revealed that “support will be received for the Phase 1 clinical trial of YBL-004 as a national research project” and that there are plans to “continue searching for candidate substances for Better PD-1, PDL-1.”

 

YBL-001 to 003 are first-in-class drugs, for which additional research is underway to examine the mechanisms of action. YBL-001 is an antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) that Y-Biologics is conducting a joint study on with LegoChem Biosciences. The drug indications include brain cancer, liver cancer, and recurrent and metastatic cancer. YBL-003, on the other hand, is a novel immuno-oncology antibody drug targeting an immune checkpoint inhibitor.

 

A competitive advantage that Y-Biologics has stems from its active collaboration with other pharmaceutical companies. To develop therapeutic agents its proprietary antibody library, joint R&D is being pursued with a number of pharmaceutical companies, including CJ Healthcare, LegoChem Biosciences, and Sanofi.

 

By Sung Min Kim, sungmin.kim@bios.co.kr