Benzinga | Jan 25, 2022 08:10AM EST

Twist Bioscience Signs Collaboration With Artisan Bio To Engineer Next Generation Cell Therapeutics

Twist Bioscience Corporation (NASDAQ:TWST), a company enabling customers to succeed through its offering of high-quality synthetic DNA using its silicon platform, and Artisan Development Labs Inc. (DBA Artisan Bio), an immune cell engineering company developing next-generation cell therapies, today announced a collaboration to discover novel antibodies against five undisclosed targets, with an option to expand with additional targets.

Under the terms of the collaboration, Twist will leverage its proprietary Library of Libraries to discover novel antibodies directed against Artisan's immunotherapy targets. Artisan will leverage its Immune Cell Engineering Foundry and STAR Guides to develop custom cell therapeutics. Twist will receive upfront technology access and project fees for each program, success-based clinical, regulatory and commercial milestones, as well as royalties on product sales.

"Twist's novel and diverse libraries provide access to a wide range of unbiased antibodies. We look forward to bringing together the massively parallel DNA synthesis platform of Twist with our own massively parallel cell engineering platform to develop the next generation of cell therapeutics," said Ryan T. Gill, Ph.D., CEO of Artisan Bio.

"CRISPR presents a myriad of opportunities to revolutionize human health. Artisan has a unique approach that combines a deep understanding of this gene-editing technology with advanced AI analysis," commented Emily M. Leproust, Ph.D., CEO and co-founder of Twist Bioscience. "Our collaboration with Artisan will leverage our innovative antibody discovery capabilities to help translate this cutting-edge approach into novel cell therapies."