Principal Investigator
Peter McPherson
McGill University
Co-investigators
Carl Laflamme
McGill University
Project of $4 127 327 over 3 years
- Supported by CQDM through:
Ministère de l’Économie, de l’Innovation et de l’Énergie du Québec (MEIE) - And by a co-funding partner:
- YCharOS Inc.
Challenge
Antibodies are generally purchased from commercial manufacturers, who have made millions of antibody products. However, many antibodies do not work as advertised and their use leads to false data. This is a main cause of the “reproducibility crisis”, a phenomenon highlighted by industry.
The science on antibody testing is largely settled and involves using a cell that expresses the protein of interest compared to a knock-out (KO) version of the same cell where that single protein is deleted. However, because of cost and capabilities, this process is rarely employed in academia, nor for “targets of the future” in pharma. Thus, thousands of papers are published on novel targets using non-specific antibodies.
Solution
YCharOS Inc. uses KO cells and a unique open science business partnership, in which antibody manufacturers donate their antibodies for use in side-by-side comparisons. All data is released publicly. The model provides companies with third-party endorsement and the community with insight on the best antibodies available. YCharOS has 11 antibody manufacturer partners representing ~60% of the antibody manufacturing market. Because testing one antibody for a target protein has a similar cost to testing many, an expensive problem becomes manageable. In this project, the team is applying this platform to hundreds of brain-related targets that are specifically chosen by industry and disease-fighting foundations.
Expected Achievements/Impact
This project will identify high-quality antibodies for research on brain-related targets, which could accelerate the development of new treatments for neurological diseases. The YCharOS platform also benefits industry by providing a useful public database for the international scientific community, thus supporting significant advances in neurological research. Furthermore, this project helps reduce validation costs for pharmaceutical companies and strengthens the Quebec research ecosystem by promoting discoveries based on more robust and reproducible results.
