Twist Bioscience and Kyowa Kirin Partner for GPCR Antibody Discovery
Twist Bioscience Corporation (NASDAQ: TWST), a company enabling customers to succeed through its offering of high-quality synthetic DNA using its silicon platform, today announced that it signed a partnership agreement with Kyowa Kirin Pharmaceutical Research, Inc., a subsidiary of Kyowa Kirin Co., Ltd. (Kyowa Kirin, TSE: 4151), a global specialty pharmaceutical company, to discover novel antibodies for therapeutic use against an undisclosed G protein-coupled receptor (GPCR) target molecule.
“We are committed to using novel, differentiated technologies to develop best-in-class therapeutics while expediting the discovery process,” said Andrew McKnight, President and Chief Scientific Officer, Kyowa Kirin Pharmaceutical Research, Inc. “We look forward to a productive and exciting partnership with Twist Bio that will allow us to discover optimized antibody therapeutics from their diverse libraries at a rapid pace.”
Under the terms of the agreement, Twist Biopharma, a division of Twist Bioscience, will leverage its unique “Library of Libraries” for biologics discovery and its proprietary discovery capabilities to discover novel GPCR target specific antibodies for Kyowa Kirin. Twist identifies proprietary antibodies that are precisely designed to match sequences that occur in the human immune system due to its unique ability to manufacture DNA at scale. This precise and rational approach to antibody library creation, combined with advanced bioinformatics expertise and automation of the early discovery processes, expedites antibody discovery - decreasing risk, increasing speed, and lowering the failure rate for antibody therapeutic development. Using this approach, Twist has also created target-class focused libraries against difficult to drug target classes, such as GPCRs; these libraries will be put to use in the collaboration. Twist received an upfront payment upon signing and Kyowa Kirin retains an option to obtain development and commercial rights to any antibodies resulting from the agreement.
“Kyowa Kirin specializes in leveraging antibody engineering to develop innovative, life-changing medicines. That expertise complements Twist’s unique approach to efficient and robust antibody discovery and optimization,” said Emily M. Leproust, Ph.D., CEO and co-founder of Twist Bioscience.
About Kyowa Kirin
Kyowa Kirin strives to create and deliver novel medicines with life-changing value. As a Japan-based Global Specialty Pharmaceutical Company, we apply cutting-edge science including an expertise in antibody research and engineering, to address the needs of patients and society across multiple therapeutic areas including Nephrology, Oncology, Immunology/Allergy and Neurology. Across our four regions – Japan, Asia Pacific, North America and EMEA/International – we focus on our purpose, to make people smile, and are united by our shared values of commitment to life, teamwork/Wa, innovation, and integrity. You can learn more about Kyowa Kirin North America at: https://kkna.kyowakirin.com.
About Twist Bioscience Corporation
Twist Bioscience is a leading and rapidly growing synthetic biology and genomics company that has developed a disruptive DNA synthesis platform to industrialize the engineering of biology. The core of the platform is a proprietary technology that pioneers a new
