Vector Laboratories Announces Partnership With British Biotech Innovator Etcembly

Leader in manufacturing reagents and critical components for biomedical research to leverage Etcembly’s AI platform to optimize antibody engineering

NEWARK, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Vector Laboratories, a manufacturing partner of reagents and critical components for the development and production of life sciences tools, diagnostics, and clinical-stage biotherapeutics, today announced a partnership with Etcembly, a British biotech innovator applying machine learning to inform the development of novel immunotherapies. The collaboration is intended to accelerate the development of improved recombinant antibody therapeutics that leverage Vector’s expertise in antibody development along with data generated by Etcembly’s AI platform, which was shortlisted by a 2024 AI Innovation Awards program.

Under the agreement, Vector Laboratories will provide non-proprietary protein sequences of antibodies having known and disclosed manufacturability issues, such as poor yield and high propensity for aggregation. The Etcembly team will perform computational analyses to generate updated sequences for each antibody, which will then be evaluated by Vector for improved manufacturability.

“This partnership represents a very dynamic opportunity for us to further expand our knowledge of factors that impact manufacturability of antibodies being used in drug discovery,” said Lisa V. Sellers, PhD, CEO of Vector Laboratories. “We’re excited to work with the Etcembly team to test optimized protein sequences and determine if their proprietary EMLy™ platform can enable us to improve them further for more effective therapies,” said Dr. Sellers.

“We are so pleased to be able to apply our technology to Vector’s capabilities,” said Michelle Teng, CEO of Etcembly. “We've been working quite a long time in the T-cell receptor space. Towards the end of last year, we were looking to apply what we've learned with T-cell receptors in the field of antibodies. Working with Vector, we can test the different variants and generate the functional data. There's just a really good synergy between us, and it will benefit researchers developing the next generation of cancer therapies.”

Biopharmaceutical drug manufacturers often have issues with manufacturability and reproducibility of particular antibodies. The data generated from the computational analyses will enable Vector and Etcembly to work together to accelerate the process of creating novel antibodies for evaluation as therapeutic candidates.

In 2024, Vector Laboratories merged with Absolute Biotech, expanding its manufacturing and distribution footprint from multiple manufacturing sites in the US to the UK and Europe. Absolute Biotech serves customers globally with antibody reagents, kits, and services to provide annotation, validation, sequencing, engineering, and recombinant manufacturing.

About Vector Laboratories

Vector Laboratories is a reagents manufacturer and services provider, partnering with scientists to address today’s toughest biomedical challenges. Our product portfolio ranges from protein and glycan detection and visualization reagents to bioconjugation linker and dye technologies, all of which enable basic scientific discovery. Through custom products and services, including recombinant antibody engineering services, we help fuel our customers’ development of next-generation therapeutics. Vector Laboratories is building on 45+ years of expertise and an unparalleled reputation for a culture of service, proven products, and incomparable technical partnership. To learn more, visit the Vector Laboratories website.

About Etcembly

Etcembly is the world’s first company using AI to discover and design effective and potent T-cell receptors (TCRs) and antibodies, breaking through the barriers holding back the potential of these life-changing therapeutics. At the heart of Etcembly's groundbreaking work is our focus on the long-term cancer survivor study. By harnessing the unparalleled capabilities of large language models, we are unravelling protective immune signatures, providing crucial insights into the mechanisms that contribute to sustained remission in certain cancer survivors. Etcembly’s AI platform EMLy™ drives the discovery and engineering of TCRs and antibodies through a lab in a loop setting to create next-generation immunotherapeutics with high affinity and specificity for cancer, autoimmune diseases and beyond.