Carterra® Inc., a leading innovator in high-throughput biology technologies, has announced the addition of its LSAXT label-free interaction analysis platform to the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine’s Center for Structural Biology (CSB). This development will empower researchers at Vanderbilt and the Vanderbilt University Medical Center to discover and characterise large molecules, including antibodies, with unprecedented speed and efficiency.
Borden Lacy, director of the CSB and holder of the Edward and Nancy Fody Chair in Pathology, expressed his enthusiasm for the new platform. “Many of our researchers are trying to identify antibodies that bind to a protein involved in health or disease. The ability to rapidly screen and quantify binding for large libraries of antibodies will shape the way molecular discovery moves forward at Vanderbilt,” Lacy stated. “The work we spend months on will now be completed in a matter of days. It is incredibly exciting.”
Carterra’s LSA platform gained recognition during the COVID-19 pandemic when pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly used it to identify effective antibodies against SARS-CoV-2. Within just 90 days of isolating antibodies from a COVID-19 survivor, Lilly commenced clinical trials for Bamlanivimab, the first therapeutic for the virus. This rapid drug discovery process has been hailed as a significant achievement in the pharmaceutical field.
Vanderbilt researchers are now set to leverage Carterra’s platform for various research projects. Two notable initiatives are already in progress:
- Stephanie Wankwicz, an assistant professor of molecular physiology and biophysics, is investigating the role of entropy in substrate specificity and catalysis. She plans to utilise Carterra’s technology to efficiently analyse a broad range of peptide sequence variants against a kinase, a task that traditional methods struggle to accomplish due to low throughput and high protein concentration requirements.
- Brian Wadzinski, an associate professor of pharmacology, is working on a grant application to characterise pan- and phosphor-specific nanobodies for studying MAPK and PP2A signalling pathways. His research necessitates the affinity measurements and high-resolution epitope binning that only Carterra’s platform can provide.
The LSAXT instrument boasts enhanced hardware and software capabilities that build upon the original LSA platform’s success. It is designed to generate 100 times the data in just 10% of the time required by other label-free platforms while consuming only 1% of the sample volume. This efficiency makes it a critical tool for researchers looking to maximise their output.
The recent launch of Vanderbilt’s Center for Applied AI in Protein Dynamics will also benefit from the addition of Carterra’s platform. The LSA® is currently the only label-free biosensor capable of producing sufficient data to train algorithms and predictive models for evaluating drug candidates’ affinity and epitope coverage. This makes it a vital asset for pharmaceutical and biotech companies that are increasingly adopting AI-driven workflows in drug discovery.
Tim Germann, Chief Commercial Officer at Carterra, remarked, “Vanderbilt has always led its peers in research innovation. By enabling the use of AI in antibody discovery and characterisation with the LSAXT, Vanderbilt solidifies its position as a leader in this rapidly evolving research landscape.”
Since its launch in 2018, Carterra’s interaction analysis platform has been adopted by 19 of the world’s 20 largest pharmaceutical companies, numerous universities, and biotechs globally, transforming early-stage research through its ability to characterise binding kinetics and epitope coverage.
