The What If Machine, as applied to Immunogenicity

Well Hello Again! Our PANDA program is back in the news. Having just completed validation studies on Salmon Calcitonin and Teriparatide,  we’re back in the business of predicting the future with the What If Machine! More info here and on our website.

The What IMachine (WhIM) is an advanced computational algorithm that performs iterative modifications to each and every amino acid in the sequence of a synthetic peptide drug, entirely in silico, generating a comprehensive list of all potential impurities that may occur due to deletions, insertions, duplications or side chain modifications at any residue of the active pharmaceutical ingredient (API). The algorithm also ranks those impurities from Highest Risk to Low Risk, flagging those that may be highest risk an enabling the FDA to request additional information. Cool huh? Bill Martin made it! (no, that is not Bill in the picture above). For more information about our PANDA program for generic peptide impurities, see: PANDAmonium from our last newsletter.

Epi-WHO?!

They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but we think the name of this vaccine is a bit too familiar. The new Russian SARS-CoV-2 vaccine is called EpiVacCorona. Wouldn’t you agree? Russian Trolls are at it again, trying to emulate our peptide-based, epitope driven EpV-CoV-19 vaccine effort. Yes, we (EpiVax) can make better, faster, safer vaccines. Which vaccine would you trust? EpiVax, or Russia? Just sayin’.

ISPRI: Now Serving Millions of Sequences!

That’s right. We keep a close watch on usage of ISPRI, and the servers have been smoking! In the past 12 months, more than 1 million sequences have been served. Since we first started keeping track, we’re in the 10 million range…. Hats off again to Andy Glasebrook (formerly Lilly) who gave us the idea of doing immunogenicity screening in a secure, cloud-based environment nearly 20+ years ago. We’ve added three new large pharma clients this year, so stay tuned for new discoveries. If you’re interested in learning more about the platform that is integrated into the quality-by-design programs at AbCellera, Boehringer Ingehleim, Chugai, Daiichi-Sankyo, JBio, Merck, and Pfizer, just to name a few, please contact us here.