“维亚生物自2019年3月起采用“服务换股权（EFS）+现金”模式投资孵化Totient Inc.。我们与Totient团队展开了紧密合作，这对维亚团队来说是一次非常有益的经验。AbSci对Totient的收购，同时也进一步验证了维亚EFS模式的可操作性，为EFS模式下孵化项目的退出提供了非常好的案例。Totient拥有独特的从肿瘤组织数据库进行虚拟筛选抗肿瘤抗体药物的平台，而AbSci强大的Denovium AI平台，将进一步提升Totient的靶标发现能力，以获得验证药物开发的新机会。我们非常期待强强联合后，公司在新药发现领域的未来发展。”
---维亚生物首席商务官，投资负责人戴晗博士
AbSci Announces Acquisition of Target Discovery Company Totient
“Starting in March 2019, Viva Biotech utilized a "cash + equity-for-service (EFS)" model to invest in Totient Inc. We fostered close cooperation with Totient's team which was a very fruitful experience for Viva. AbSci’s acquisition of Totient also further demonstrates the successful operability of Viva’s EFS model and provides an excellent example for an investment exit under this cooperative model. Totient has created a unique platform to screen antibody drugs from a tumor tissue database and in combination with AbSci’s powerful Denovium AI platform, Totient’s target discovery capabilities will be further enhanced. Viva is looking forward to seeing the new drug development opportunities created by AbSci's acquisition of Totient."
---Dr. Han Dai,
CBO and Head of Investment of Viva Biotech
VANCOUVER, Wash., June 14, 2021 --- AbSci, the synthetic biology company unlocking the potential of proteins as next-generation therapeutics, today announced the acquisition of Totient, a biotech company invested and incubated by Viva Biotech (01873.HK), harnessing human immune responses to identify novel antibodies and their therapeutic targets. This acquisition adds antibody and target discovery technology to AbSci's platform for therapeutic protein design and biomanufacturing optimization.
The development of comprehensive predictive models that encompass the interactions of key proteins related to immune responses in different disease states is an enormous opportunity for biologic drug development. Building on Totient's ability to identify fully-human antibodies from patients who demonstrate differentiated immune responses, AbSci expects to generate a large collection of natural human antibodies and target antigens that it may leverage for therapeutic protein design as well as deep learning model training.
To date Totient has reconstructed more than 4,500 antibodies from over 50,000 patients and has de-orphaned a collection of promising antibodies by identifying and validating their target antigens. AbSci's high-throughput single cell protein expression systems and assays offer a complementary platform for rapidly and systematically de-orphaning the computationally derived antibody sequences in Totient's growing library.
The disease targets identified may be used in the discovery of new therapeutics, including those based on paired antibody sequences. Additionally, the data captured from billions of single cell experiments offer training sets for AbSci's Denovium Engine™ deep learning models.
"Totient's innovative work identifying disease-relevant molecules has exciting therapeutic potential," commented Sean McClain, founder and CEO of AbSci. "We believe that the combination of the Totient technology with AbSci's platform, including our Denovium AI, provides us the framework and data to enable in silico targeted drug design, and ultimately achieve our goals of making the best medicines available to patients in need."
