ENPICOM partners with Erasmus University Medical Center in groundbreaking effort to discover nanobodies against cancer

February 19, 2024

Erasmus University Medical Center uses ENPICOM’s IGX Platform and services to advance their research on identifying cancer nanobodies.

‘s-Hertogenbosch, Netherlands – February 20, 2024Life Science Newswire – ENPICOM, an innovative bioinformatics software solutions provider, has announced a collaboration with Erasmus Medical Center, Rotterdam, a distinguished leader in cancer research. The aim of this partnership is to identify and develop nanobodies against cancer by utilizing ENPICOM’s immune repertoire data analysis services and software solutions.

"We selected ENPICOM to support our project because of their unique software that is specifically designed for antibody discovery workflows and their ability to operate as an extension of our team," said project lead Dr. Guido Jenster, professor of Experimental Urological Oncology at Erasmus MC. "By combining the strengths of our team and ENPICOM's expertise, we are well-positioned to make significant progress in our pursuit of discovering novel cancer therapeutics." The collaboration is funded by the Ministry of Economic Affairs by means of the PPP Allowance made available by the Top Sector Life Sciences & Health to stimulate public-private partnerships. 

"We are excited that Erasmus MC, a distinguished leader in cancer research, has chosen ENPICOM to advance the frontier of nanobody-based treatments.” stated Paul van der Velde, CEO at ENPICOM. “Nanobodies hold immense potential as a transformative tool in cancer therapy.”

Compared to traditional antibodies, nanobodies are much smaller, enhancing tissue penetration and tumor infiltration. Moreover, nanobodies tend to have longer CDR3 regions, enabling them to better recognize hidden epitopes. Their simple single-chain structure also grants nanobodies greater stability and ease of production and engineering.

ENPICOM’s IGX Platform is specifically designed to analyze antibody sequencing data and discover a diverse set of developable candidates. The software seamlessly integrates sequence and experimental assay data, allowing for efficient cluster, phylogenetic, and display enrichment analyses in a secure and scalable environment. Moreover, to ensure the best antibody candidates are selected for follow-up studies the platform enables high-throughput structural modeling of antibodies to accurately identify and annotate exposed liabilities. This makes it a powerful solution to streamline any antibody discovery workflow and easily identify the best antibody candidates for further development.

In addition to the IGX Platform, ENPICOM offers full-service immune repertoire sequencing and analysis in collaboration with Cerba Research. Furthermore, ENPICOM offers on-demand repertoire analysis and custom development to support non-standard R&D – a solid combination of immunology, bioinformatics and software engineering to take on anything touching adaptive immune repertoires. 

About ENPICOM

ENPICOM is an innovative bioinformatics software engineering company delivering ground-breaking products and customized solutions to decode the immune system and improve human health. With a diverse team of experts in various disciplines, ENPICOM serves customers from all over the world, ranging from academic research centers doing basic research related to the immune system to biotech and global pharmaceutical companies focusing on the discovery and development of novel antibodies and vaccines.

Leveraging a unique mix of immunology knowledge, bioinformatics methods, and software development skills, ENPICOM offers a world-class repertoire sequencing data analysis solution – the ImmunoGenomiX (IGX) Platform. IGX is an innovative platform to manage, analyze, visualize, and interpret immune repertoire sequencing data from T and B cell receptors. Moreover, together with its partners, ENPICOM also delivers full immune repertoire sequencing and analysis on demand. For additional information, please visit enpicom.com.