Antibody Discovery Service
What sets us apart?
Abterra Bio offers antibody discovery services to deliver diverse, fit-for-purpose antibodies for your needs.
Unlike other platforms, our antibody discovery service focuses on the antibodies present in serum. Why does that matter?
1. Serum antibody titer provides the go/no go decision point for all immunization-based discovery campaigns. Instead of throwing the serum antibodies away and hunting for antibodies that recapitulate the serum reactivity, our platform analyzes the serum antibodies directly.
2. Serum antibodies are abundant and accessible. There are 11 orders of magnitude more antibodies in blood than B cells, which translates to millions of antibodies that can be screened in a single project.
3. A sequence everything approach delivers diversity. We sequence every antibody we screen, while other platforms screen and then sequence. When the immune response is dominated by a single clonal lineage, sequencing at the last stage will oversample the expanded clones and deliver low-diversity candidates. Instead, we select diverse candidate sequences from the antibody repertoire that perform diverse functions and target diverse epitopes.
Rabbit Antibody Discovery
High affinity rabbit monoclonal antibodies are ideal for detection and diagnostic applications. The unique rabbit immune response generates strong serum antibodies to a variety of target types.
Single Domain Antibody (VHHs) Discovery
VHHs/nanobodies are single chain antibodies derived from camelids that are devoid of light chains. Their small size (15kDa) and ease to engineer make them ideal modular components of therapeutics.
Human Antibody Discovery
The human immune response to challenge contains a plethora of fully human antibodies that have been optimized by the natural immune system and selected for secretion by the patient.
We can work with other species too!
Alicanto® Workflow
Alicanto® uses mass spectrometry combined with next-generation sequencing to identify the highest affinity antibodies that have been selected by the native immune system. Our technology is flexible, and can be applied to a variety of host organisms, including rabbit, human, and llama.
1. Antigen Selection
During project planning, we discuss antigen design, selection, and production to achieve your antibody discovery goals.
2. Immunization
We immunize hosts to generate a strong antibody response to the antigen. We collect samples throughout the immunization in order to construct a comprehensive map of the antibody repertoire.
3. Alicanto Candidate Selection
Mass spectrometry and next-generation sequencing are used to capture a broad snapshot of the antibody repertoire. The Alicanto computational platform selects a diverse set of candidates that are driving the serum titer.
4. Expression & Validation
Alicanto candidates are expressed and evaluated for binding to the antigen.
Learn more on how we can customize our workflow to your project needs!
Frequently Asked Questions
Why does serum matter?
We measure the success of our immunization using the serum antibody titer. Once we know that antibodies with the desired functionality are present in the serum, why would we look anywhere else?
For what applications is this useful?
Our antibodies can be used for a wide array of applications including as therapeutics, diagnostics, and research tools.
Unlike single B cell, hybridoma, or B cell cloning approaches that leave screening until the end stages, we build the desired antibody properties into the earliest stages of the process. This allows us to de-risk a project early, and deliver high quality antibody sequences to you faster.
What about other species?
Alicanto® can be applied to any species with a backbone and a jaw, as long as a sufficient antibody response can be generated to your target.
Alicanto® Deliverables
Sequences – Full sequence information for all hits identified by Alicanto®.
Interactive report – An interactive, web-based report of the entire dataset to investigate individual antibodies, clonal families, and repertoire-wide features.
Transparency – Full access to the sequences and supporting data.
Expressed antibodies – Transient production of candidates and screening available.
Get more from your projects with Alicanto-FLEX
In a standard Alicanto project, we run the immunization for your project, but if you have an ongoing immunization or samples from from your previous phage display or B cell screening projects, Alicanto–FLEX fits right in.
Get In Touch
Tell Us About Your Project.
Need more information? We’re here to answer any questions you have.
Resources and Publications
Alicanto® integrates next-generation sequencing analysis of antibody repertoires with computational mass spectrometry measurements of antibody proteins. The early algorithmic foundation for Alicanto® was developed at the Computer Science and Engineering Department at the University of California – San Diego.
Publications by Abterra Bio founders and team members include:
- Patel, A., Lima, T., Carson, R., Huang, Q., Bonissone, S. R., & Castellana, N. (2025). Serum proteomics reveals high-affinity and convergent antibodies by tracking SARS-CoV-2 hybrid immunity to emerging variants of concern. Frontiers in Immunology, 16, 1509888.
- Gilchuk, P., Guthals, A., Bonissone, S. R., Shaw, J. B., Ilinykh, P. A., Huang, K., … & Crowe, J. E. (2021). Proteo-genomic analysis identifies two major sites of vulnerability on ebolavirus glycoprotein for neutralizing antibodies in convalescent human plasma. Frontiers in immunology, 12, 706757.
- Safonova, et al. (2015). IgRepertoire Constructor: a novel algorithm for antibody repertoire construction and immunoproteogenomics analysis. Bioinformatics, 31, 12:i53-61.
- Cha, SW, Bonissone, S, Na, S, Pevzner, PA, Bafna, V (2017). The Antibody Repertoire of Colorectal Cancer. Mol Cell Proteomics, 16, 12:2111-2124.
- Bonissone, SR, Pevzner, PA (2016). Immunoglobulin Classification Using the Colored Antibody Graph. J Comput Biol, 23, 6:483-94.