Kymab's Kymouse platform and technologyFintan Walton:
Hello and welcome to PharmaTelevision News Review here at BIO-Europe, in Duesseldorf 2011. On this show I have Tom Shepherd, who is Chief Business Officer at a company called Kymab based in Cambridge in the UK, welcome.
Tom Shepherd:
Thanks a lot, thanks for having me on this show.
Fintan Walton:
Pleasure. Tom, can you tell us a little bit about Kymab?
Tom Shepherd:
Kymab is a recent spin-out from the Sanger Institute in Cambridge based around the combination of the ES cell technologies of the institute, Professor Allan Bradley was the founder coupled with the antibody and immunology skills of Mike Owen who is the Chief Scientific Officer.
Fintan Walton:
Okay, so obviously when you enter into the area of antibodies you have to bring something new to the table, so what is new? What is different? What's unique about Kymab?
Tom Shepherd:
Kymab is developing a new transgenic in vivo human antibody platform, the main difference has been antibody platforms and mouse models before the new thing that Kymab is bringing to it is that we are putting entire functional diversity of the genes involved in the human antibody response and to a mouse with the intention of creating a very broad spectrum of antibodies broader than that has been created in these kind of models before.
Fintan Walton:
So in the end you are producing mouse monoclonal antibodies but from a human re-variable regions?
Tom Shepherd:
Yes the mouse have been modified and that the they contain all of the various genes involved in the variable regions of antibodies and this is coupled to the constant region of a mouse antibody so that we have a proper immune response in the mouse, therefore when you immunize the mouse with an antigen or rather a drug target you will create a broad spectrum of human antibodies in the mouse which can then be taken forward into development later, so the mouse actually does the job of the rearrangements and everything that's necessary to come up with an optimum antibody.
Fintan Walton:
So it is actually human antibody that's produced there?
Tom Shepherd:
It's, the first antibody created is the human variable region which is what bends to the antigen and the most constant region, but then once that is identified that sequence is identified the most constant region is exchanged for our human constant regions so we have a fully humanized antibody.
Fintan Walton:
Right, so you go back into the normal way in which you'd produce monoclonal, humanized monoclonal antibodies?
Tom Shepherd:
Except it's fully human.
Fintan Walton:
Except it's fully human now. Okay, right without having to do a genetically engineered the variable reasons?
Tom Shepherd:
Yes, and there are many in vitro platforms that can be used to make human antibodies, but the beauty of using the mouse model is that the mouse has a in vivo system it's nature who optimizes the antibody for you so we end up with an optimum candidate and just to give you an example there are nine fully human antibodies approved by the FDA of which seven came from mouse models and two came from in vitro models. So we believe that the mouse is an excellent way of producing high quality antibodies and the Kymouse version the Kymouse we'll be having the full diversity of the human response therefore we think it will lead too much better for candidates.
Fintan Walton:
Right, so where are you in that research and development?
Tom Shepherd:
We are essentially about half way through the whole the project of creating the mouse model and we will have the platform available for commercial use towards the middle of next year that will be around we will be hoping to start commercial operations, we will have enough mouse to be able to do immunizations. The Kymouse is actually it's not a single strain of mouse it's a platform of different mouse and one of the additional or the benefits we are bringing because of our expertise in the ES cells is that once we have the mouse model the Kymouse with the full human background we will then rederive stem cells from it to create a new stem cell line which can then be manipulated directly in vitro to create knock-outs and knock-ins in various genetic modifications.
Fintan Walton:
Right, so just for the audience ES your first embryonic stem cells?
Tom Shepherd:
A most embryonic stem cells in this case, yes and the beauty of the knock-out is that sometimes mouse have a problem of the human target your vision to immunize is similar to our mouse structure because it's recognized itself by the mouse, so by having this knock-out technology available we can delete that mouse homolog and then when you immunize you will get a very good immune response without the complexities of self tolerance.
Fintan Walton:
Okay, all those things have to be considered of course.
Fintan Walton:
In the complexities of antibody production. So in the end you are basically creating a platform a new way in which companies and organizations can identify antibodies?
Tom Shepherd:
Yes, it's the platform we are hoping to partner widely both we will be encouraging academic access, but in additionally with pharma and biotech partners to help them find new antibody candidates for the drug pipeline.
Business model and partnering strategyFintan Walton:
So Tom, when it comes to the actual Kymouse itself is do companies, do you keep the Kymouse or do you give away the Kymouse, how does that work?
Tom Shepherd:
Okay, that's a good question, because it's a lot of companies have specific needs for healthy one to handle the projects, our view is it for smaller projects around at a specific target may be one or two different targets where we can collaborate closely with the company in that case we would keep the Kymouse in Kymab and we would have a collaborative structure where we worked with the partners targets and that would protect this as I see the smaller companies perhaps because it's less expensive way of dealing with it, but some of the larger companies who have broader strategies and antibodies have made it clear to us they would be very interested in having a Kymouse actually in their own laboratories with the freedom to work on targets that they choose to select and without being limited and we have made it clear that we have developed a business model that will allow them to do that.
Fintan Walton:
Because in the end most of your revenue will come from success?
Tom Shepherd:
Exactly the success of the platform both in our partner hands and also with our own pipeline.
Fintan Walton:
So the more people play with the mouse more likely you gonna get hit?
Tom Shepherd:
Yes exactly, so we will we definitely want to partner broadly and we are trying to have these flexible structure so that we can work with both the large companies and the companies with smaller pipelines.
Funding and investmentsFintan Walton:
Right, so let's just look at the company, because obviously creating such a platform is an expensive task?
Tom Shepherd:
Yes, it's so expensive.
Fintan Walton:
So how in these difficult times that Kymab managed to fund itself?
Tom Shepherd:
Well after the foundation in 2009 from the Sanger Institute the company was funded in 2010 with a very significant investment from the Wellcome Trust in fact using an approach that they had not used before in that they are they put in a 20 million pounds Series A into Kymab, but that 20 million was only from the Wellcome Trust they were the sole investor which was a new model for them and that's very important for Kymab because that gives us the solidity in the foundation to not only make this complex platform but also to commence our own drug discovery activities to make our strategy of being a platform to product company.
Commercialisation strategy for KymabFintan Walton:
So Tom, how can you summarize the commercialization strategy for Kymab?
Tom Shepherd:
Well it's actually as I was saying we are a platform to product company and we have essentially two key aspects of our business, one is our own drug discovery which is the long-term strategy of the business and we want to develop our own pipeline of monoclonal antibody drugs, in addition we will be partnering the platform widely with the intention of first of all collaborations on a scientific basis which was academics and so on which will assist Kymab in finding targets, but on commercial side we will be partnering with pharma and biotech companies to bring in non-dilutive cash to the company to also assist our own drug discovery efforts, so the partnering will bring in revenues in the near-term that will help support the business.
Fintan Walton:
Excellent. Well Tom, thank you very much indeed for coming on the show.