Twist Bioscience, Takeda Partner to Advance Biologics Discovery

By T. Chakraborty, Ph.D.

On July 9th, San Francisco-based Twist Bioscience Corporation announced a partnership with Takeda, one of the largest biopharma companies, giving access to its proprietary phage display libraries. This move enables Takeda to further solidify its position as a leading biopharma. It adds tremendous value to its pipeline of biological products focusing on rare diseases, neuroscience, and gastroenterology, among others. Takeda, headquartered in Massachusetts, ranks among the top 14 of the fastest growing pharma with over 18,000 employees in the US alone.

Robert Mabry, Head of Global Biologics Research at Takeda, said, “Twist’s unique ability to generate robust, diverse and cutting-edge libraries through its proprietary silicon platform together with our deep insight into therapeutic drug discovery and development will help us expand a growing pipeline of targeted biologic candidates.”

The terms of the agreement specify that Twist Biopharma, which is a sub-division of Twist Bioscience, will be handing over the license to its “Library of Libraries,” which constitutes a consortium of synthetic antibody phages derived solely from sequences that are present in the human body, to Takeda. This will accelerate growth for both companies as they strive together to discover and validate new antibodies. Takeda, in return, will pay licensing fees per year to Twist Biosciences and also share any potential discoveries, milestones, and royalties for biological compounds unearthed using Twist Bioscience’s proprietary synthetic DNA platform.

Twist Bioscience is a rapidly growing Synbio company that uses its in-house synthetic DNA silicon platform to disrupt and commercialize biological engineering. The core of the platform lies in the proprietary semiconductor-based synthetic DNA manufacturing process, which constitutes a silicon platform that propels them to minimize the associated chemistry for DNA synthesis, which helps them cut down on the reaction volumes and increase their production by a factor of 1000.

This translates to about synthesizing approximately 9600 genes on a single silicon chip. When you compare this to a traditional DNA synthesis method, the traditional way uses the same space, which is a 96-well plate, to produce a single gene.

Twist is using this unique proprietary platform to produce a wide range of synthetic DNA-based products, which includes genes, items for next-generation sequencing (NGS) preparation, and antibodies for drug discovery. Additionally, Twist Bioscience’s pipeline includes digital data storage in DNA to facilitate the production of new drugs. The products manufactured by Twist Bioscience find use in industrial chemicals, diagnostics, agriculture, and academics.

In a statement, Emily M Leproust, Ph.D., CEO and Co-Founder of Twist Bioscience said: “We look forward to applying our unique ability to generate robust, diverse and cutting-edge libraries together with Takeda’s deep insight into therapeutic drug discovery and development to truly forge new frontiers in bringing personalized therapies to patients worldwide.”

Editor: Rajaneesh K. Gopinath, Ph.D.

Related Article: Codexis, Molecular Assemblies Enter Revolutionary DNA Synthesis Partnership

References

1. https://investors.twistbioscience.com/news-releases/news-release-details/takeda-partners-twist-bioscience-expand-biologics-discovery
2. https://www.twistbioscience.com/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=Branded-North-America&utm_term=Branded&utm_content=Branded-North-America&gclid=Cj0KCQjwo6D4BRDgARIsAA6uN19yS8HxSobq2HhMfqwq8joNbuTqi-i5KtYRyNO5r_GhgIPm4HELJUcaAuSlEALw_wcB

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Author

Tulip Chakraborty