Licensing Opportunity: Nanomice for Use Against Infectious Diseases

Licensing Opportunity: Nanomice for Use Against Infectious Diseases

A mouse cell line engineered to produce camelid nanobodies for use against infectious diseases or for basic applications is available for licensing. 

Nanobodies:

  • have equivalent binding specificity to antigens as antibodies but are more heat- and detergent-stable. 
  • can target epitopes that are not normally accessible to conventional antibodies. 
  • can also be readily humanized and appear to be safe and have low immunogenicity in clinical trials.

The creation of nanobody-producing mice, termed nanomice, has the potential to accelerate the development of nanobodies against infectious diseases and other diagnostic and therapeutic uses. 

A paper published on these nanobodies, Nanobodies from camelid mice and llamas neutralize SARS-CoV-2 variants, details how these nanobodies may be particularly useful in developing SARS-CoV-2 vaccines as they overcome SARS-CoV-2 mutations due to their enhanced avidity for the ACE2-binding domain and recognition of conserved epitopes that are largely inaccessible to human antibodies. These nanobodies rival the most potent antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 that have been produced to date.

Further information on this mouse cell line can be found on the abstract, A Mouse Cell Line Engineered to Produce Camelid Nanobodies for Diagnostic and Therapeutic Use.