The difficulties stem from the complexity of antibodies: they are composed of two polypeptide chains which need to be co-engineered and co-expressed. Clinical development of an antibody-based drug is complex and arduous, often taking years ( 2, 3). Because of their binding malleability they are the primary class of biotherapeutics (6 of 10 blockbusters and market worth ∼100b$). INDI should facilitate development of novel nanobody-specific computational protocols helping to deliver on the therapeutic promise of this drug format.Īntibodies are proteins capable of recognizing a specific molecular site on a potentially noxious molecule (antigen), starting an immune response ( 1). We equip INDI with powerful nanobody-specific sequence and text search facilitating access to >11 million nanobody sequences.

INDI collates nanobodies from all the major public outlets of biological sequences: patents, GenBank, next-generation sequencing repositories, structures and scientific publications. We address this issue by creating the Integrated Database of Nanobodies for Immunoinformatics (INDI, ).

Though the nanobody sequence and structure data are deposited in the public domain at an accelerating pace, the heterogeneity of sources and lack of standardization hampers reliable harvesting of nanobody information. Structured data and sequence information of nanobodies will enable the accelerated clinical development of nanobody-based therapeutics.

The small size of nanobodies bestows multiple therapeutic advantages (stability, tumor penetration) with the first therapeutic approval in 2018 cementing the clinical viability of this format. Nanobodies, a subclass of antibodies found in camelids, are versatile molecular binding scaffolds composed of a single polypeptide chain.

Fera wyns