AAX Biotech: A Swedish start-up with next gen ambitions

AAX Biotech says it hopes to establish a presence in the antibody development space through its in-house tech platforms. We spoke with newly appointed CEO Maria Lisa Knudsen to find out more. 

Swedish start-up, AAX Biotech specializes in antibody therapeutics, and offers two proprietary technologies, Seqitope and Opti-mAb. Founded by scientists from Karolinska Institutet, the firm has recently appointed Maria Lisa Knudsen as CEO.  

“As a CEO I am wearing a lot of hats since we’re a growing company still. Our technologies have so many potential applications. Our aim is to establish our presence in the market and become leaders in the highly competitive biopharmaceutical industry through our pioneering technology platforms,” Knudsen told BioProcess Insider.

Maria Lisa Knudsen, CEO of AAX Biotech. c/o AAX Biotech

With an aim to meet the unmet needs in developing next-generation antibody therapeutics, the firm’s patentable technologies improve performance and develop-ability, claiming to offer a unique solution in a rapidly growing market. 

The Seqitope technology enables high-throughput and high-resolution epitope mapping, while Optimab stabilizes single chain variable fragments (scFv) for applications such as bispecific antibodies and chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cells. According to the firm, both technologies aim to produce better and more effective antibody-based medicines.  

“AAX is a research driven biotechnology company with two arms of our company, Seqitope and Opti-mAb. Seqitope is a novel epitope mapping technology based on massive parallel mutagenic scanning with high throughput and high-resolution results. Whereas Opti-mAb is a new improved scFv antibody format that is generally applicable.” 

Antibody drugs bind to a target molecule in the body; however, one challenge is to develop antibodies that bind the drug to the right epitope on the target.  According to the firm, through epitope mapping this can be monitored which makes the process efficient and cost-effective.

“Through Seqitope, drug development firms can epitope map candidates efficiently in a high throughput manner. There are other methods, but our method is unique because it is high throughput and high resolution. Through Seqitop we obtain amino acid resolution, and we can run many antibodies in parallel.”

According to AAX, the other arm Opti-mAb, stabilizes single-chain variable fragments (scFv). Moreover, the firm claims that the technology produces high yields and reduces aggregation.

“The technologies are patentable, and we already have ongoing collaborations. We work very closely with our partners, with an aim to find the best solutions,” Knudsen said.

Knudsen has previously led Salipro Biotech as business development director, where she was involved in out-licensing the company’s technology platform for drug discovery as well as establishing an internal pipeline.