Abalone Bio is developing antibody drugs that target receptors on the surface of cells to treat diseases. G-protein coupled receptors (GPCRs) are important for cellular health and frequently get disrupted in disease, yet many remain undruggable by small molecules. Antibodies are also limited to only blocking, not activating, GPCRs. Abalone is changing this by finding both activating or inhibiting bioactive antibodies that target GPCRs. To discover these antibodies, Abalone is combining engineered living cells with data-driven computation, which is compatible with different types of antibodies. Abalone’s first therapeutic focus is immune system regulators that cause inflammatory diseases and cancer.

<p>Abalone Bio is developing antibody drugs that target receptors on the surface of cells to treat diseases. G-protein coupled receptors (GPCRs) are important for cellular health and frequently get disrupted in disease, yet many remain undruggable by small molecules. Antibodies are also limited to only blocking, not activating, GPCRs. Abalone is changing this by finding both activating or inhibiting bioactive antibodies that target GPCRs. To discover these antibodies, Abalone is combining engineered living cells with data-driven computation, which is compatible with different types of antibodies. Abalone’s first therapeutic focus is immune system regulators that cause inflammatory diseases and cancer.</p>


Abalone Bio

 Trilobio introduces whole-laboratory automation platform at SLAS2025 

Meet Lauren Schwimmer, VP of Preclinical Development at Abalone Bio! 

Lauren brings a wealth of antibody and immuno-oncology drug development experience to the team. At Xoma and Distributed Bio, Lauren helped develop two of the most well-regarded antibody libraries in the industry and led multiple discovery and preclinical development teams.

At QLSF, Lauren directed three preclinical-stage bispecific antibody programs focused on immuno-oncology.

Outside of work, you’ll likely find Lauren traveling, knitting, or coaching LEGO robotics teams.

We're proud to have you on our team Lauren!


Preclinical biotherapeutics company Abalone Bio and bioinformatics cloud platform provider PipeBio announce collaborative efforts in antibody drug discovery - PR Web

We are proud to have investors like Seth DeGroot and Adam G. at the Gravity Fund on our journey with us! 

GLP-1 Players Seek to Differentiate in Increasingly Crowded Weight Loss Space - BioSpace

What a week at the Antibody Engineering & Therapeutics Conference! 👏 

Here's a quick recap of key takeaways and highlights from our CEO + co-Founder Richard Yu & VP of Antibody Discovery Monica Schwartz:

🔍 Discovery Insights

-Continued focus on structure and developability.
-Broad recognition of the gap in functional activity data.
-Highlights on the importance of agonist antibody discovery.
-A critical reminder: Strong affinity isn’t enough. Improving affinity can sometimes compromise functional activation, as seen in examples from 
Triplebar and Specifica, an IQVIA business.

🧪 The Experimental Frontier:

-Even the best AI models (e.g., David Baker's lab) require testing thousands of proposed molecules to find ones that work.

-GPCRs remain a challenging target for binding-based antibodies.

💡 Sunday Workshop: 
-"Innovate, Invest, Succeed: The Business Landscape of Antibody Therapeutics" was a standout session filled with dynamic discussions and insights.

👏 Kudos to the organizers for assembling such a stellar lineup:
Jennifer Cochran, Stanford University
Jonathan Sockolosky, Curie.Bio

📢 Special thanks to the incredible presenters:
Lazar Bojic, Curie.Bio
Robin Silva, Xencor
Sarah Hymowitz, The Column Group
Alexey "Alex" Lugovskoy, Diagonal Therapeutics
Shelley Force Aldred, Rondo Therapeutics

We look forward to what 2025 has in store as we continue to push the boundaries and shaping the future of antibody therapeutics! 💡🔬

Bay Area Lab Utilizes AI In Search For Next Effective Weight Loss Drug - Patch

 Abalone Bio and University of Pennsylvania Announce Collaboration to Develop Next-Generation Obesity Drugs 

PartnershipsWe are working with top drug companies to bring them target-activating antibodies for their key targets. Learn more about collaborating with Abalone Bio.

We are proud to have Richard Shen on our journey with us! 

Richard Shen is a Managing Director at the VC fund, Sedgwick Yard. In 2021, he identified and led the pre-Series A investment in DJS Antibodies, an Oxford University spinout focused on GPCR antibody discovery, alongside LifeArc, Amgen Ventures, JJDC, and Oxford Science Enterprises. DJS Antibodies was acquired by AbbVie in 2022. Before joining Sedgwick Yard, Richard worked in the investment banking divisions of Goldman Sachs and UBS in both London and Hong Kong.

Thank you for all the guidance and support you bring to the table!

Our CEO Richard Yu was recently on The Bio Report hosted by Daniel Levine! Check out the full episode here: https://lnkd.in/gvZdMMpj

"Antibodies have been powerful tools for inhibiting a targeted protein. Abalone Bio is pursuing a new class of antibody therapies called activating antibodies that can regulate cellular processes and restore their balance. One aspect that makes these rare antibodies attractive is that they can target previously undruggable G protein-coupled receptors, allowing them to treat diseases that have been hard to address. We spoke to Richard Yu, co-founder and CEO of Abalone Bio, about activating antibodies, how the company generates massive data sets for its AI-driven platform technology, and how it looks beyond binding to explore the function of these antibodies." -Daniel Levine

 Abalone Bio’s Post 

Abalone Bio - The Pharma Letter

Heading to the Keystone Symposia on Molecular & Cellular Biology - Neurobiology of Ingestive Behavior?

Our Chief Scientific Officer, Toshihiko Takeuchi, PhD, will be there representing Abalone Bio.

If you're attending, be sure to connect – we'd love to chat!

Bay Area lab utilizes AI in search for next effective weight loss drug - CBS News

 East Bay company aims to tame a shrew to make better GLP-1 weight-loss drugs 

As we approach 2025, Abalone Bio is moving forward with a new look and website! This refresh marks the next step in our mission to unlock challenging and promising drug targets with our first-in-class, data-driven, and ML-designed activating antibodies.

Check out the new site to stay updated on our latest progress: www.abalonebio.com

More to come! 🚀 

Generation of a potent anti-PD-L1-CD47 bispecific antibody with a strong therapeutic and safety profile for cancer immunotherapy - Frontiers

Last week I came across this great, thought-provoking report by Chris Bradbury (many kudos). It's awesome to see the evolution of AI in drug discovery! As the field matures, we're learning valuable lessons and developing increasingly powerful tools.

It’s also exciting to be at Abalone Bio as we ourselves ride the 4th wave of AI biotech: We are combining the massive, functionally relevant datasets generated by the FAST platform with cutting-edge protein language models (PLLMs), which allows us to turn prior information about structure learned through self-supervision into insights about target-relevant function. We operate in tight feedback loops that allow us to turn hits into leads. Our success in developing CB2 agonist antibodies, overcoming receptor specificity challenges, exemplifies the power of the FAST platform.

Like any good thinkpiece, I found myself nodding along a lot but also finding some differences in perspective. The report postulates that supervised learning is 3rd-wave and self-supervised is 4th-wave–implying a natural evolution from one to the next. I think this is not a function of the superiority of self-supervision but rather the reality that the scale of high-quality, relevant data needed to train PLLMs and other data-hungry models is hard to come by and using self-supervision is more pragmatic. We at Abalone are generating datasets with measurements of functional activity–not just binding–for 100’s of millions of antibodies against GPCRs allowing us to reap the benefits of supervised learning at scale.

I've noticed an uptick in skepticism about the impact of AI in drug discovery (as there should be – this is science after all). At the same time, I see an upsurge in innovation and an increased focus on finding drugs from those pushing the field forward. It's a thrilling time to be in this space, and I'm eager to connect with others who share this passion. If you feel the same way, reach out and let’s chat about the future of AI in biotech!

https://lnkd.in/gJf4GpE3

Antibodies are transforming drug development, especially when it comes to tackling challenging targets like GPCRs (G-protein-coupled receptors). GPCRs are among the hardest target classes for antibodies because they require precise adjustments to their protein structures to activate them.

Unlike other targets that can be triggered through straightforward dimerization or clustering, GPCRs demand a unique level of precision - making antibody therapy both complex and groundbreaking.

Here at Abalone Bio we have developed our Functional Antibody Selection Technology (FAST) platform to rapidly create difficult-to-discover antibody activators to specifically and effectively drug challenging and promising target classes 🎯

Stay tuned for more updates!

 GLP-1 Players Seek to Differentiate in Increasingly Crowded Weight Loss Space 

The Co-Founder & CEO of Abalone Bio, Richard Yu is talking about Abalone Bio’s cutting-edge antibody modulator technologies for challenging specific GCPRs. 

These next-generation therapies aim to tackle unmet medical needs at the intersection of inflammation, fibrosis and pain. Their lead programs, including ABt285, are pioneering solutions for conditions like chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy and liver fibrosis with a strong emphasis on precision and safety. ABt285 avoids psychoactive effects, the risk of metabolic side effects, and issues related to chronic use and tolerance, setting new standards in therapeutic innovation for pain and inflammation management.

Learn more about Abalone Bio here 👉 https://lnkd.in/eiftJH2Z
Explore the Bioneex platform (bioneex.com) to connect with them.

Catch our CEO & Co-founder Richard Yu, live at SynBioBeta 2025!

Richard will be speaking on the panel “Next-Gen Medicine: AI-Powered Advances Reshaping Human Therapeutics”  - a conversation with leading voices at the intersection of AI and biotech.

🗓️ Wednesday, May 7
🕞 3:30 – 4:15 PM PT
📍 SynBioBeta 2025, San Jose, CA

Joined by fellow panelists Kareem Barghouti (Pragma Bio) and Nazli Azimi (THERNA Therapeutics), and moderated by Krish W. Ramadurai (AIX Ventures), this session will dive into how biotech leaders are using machine learning and AI to transform the engineering of human therapeutics today, not just in the future.

Discover how we’re harnessing AI to supercharge synthetic biology at Abalone Bio, unlocking functional antibodies and driving the next wave of targeted therapeutics.

Learn more about the event: https://www.synbiobeta.com

Did you catch our CEO Richard Yu on the SynBioBeta panel “Next-Gen Medicine: AI-Powered Advances Reshaping Human Therapeutics”?

He was joined by:
Kareem Barghouti (Pragma Bio)
Nazli Azimi (THERNA Therapeutics)
Krish W. Ramadurai (AIX Ventures)

They discussed how biotech leaders are using machine learning and AI to transform the engineering of human therapeutics today, not just in the future! 🚀 

Are you going to Antibody Engineering & Therapeutics 2024? Join us December 18th at 10:30 AM to listen to our VP of Antibody Discovery Monica Schwartz talk about how Abalone Bio’s Functional Antibody Selection Technology (FAST) platform is transforming antibody drug discovery by combining biology and machine learning (ML).

FAST simultaneously tests the entire diversity of antibody libraries directly for the desired function and produces library-scale sequence-function datasets that uniquely power generative protein language models to design novel active antibody sequences. Abalone's FAST-discovered antibodies have been demonstrated to have agonist activity in vitro and in vivo.

If you'd like to set up a separate time to meet, connect with Monica or our CEO + Co-Founder, Richard Yu. See you there!

Starting the year full speed ahead at #JPM2025! If you're interested in learning more about what we're working on at Abalone Bio and how we tackle GPCRs, the hardest target class for antibodies, connect with our CEO + Co-Founder Richard Yu to set up a time to meet. See you there! 



                What to know about GLP-1 supplements for weight loss
              

Abalone Bio will be at the San Francisco Business Times, Bay Area Biotech Forum: The Future of Bay Area Biotech!

Our Co-Founder and CEO, Richard Yu, will present during the Up-and-Coming Companies showcase, highlighting how Abalone is creating target-activating antibodies that unlock key challenging disease targets!

The event brings together leading voices to explore the challenges and opportunities shaping the Bay Area biotech ecosystem, from macroeconomic shifts to on-the-ground decisions that move therapies from bench to bedside.

Looking forward to connecting with the community and contributing to the conversation. See you there!

Register here: https://lnkd.in/eReH-XNd

Our technology directly measures activity of all antibodies, eliminating biases from binding-based methods.

Existing large-scale discovery technologies focus on attributes like binding affinity first, largely because that is historically an easy property to score and optimize.

Activity is tested very late in the discovery process on a few high-affinity antibodies targeting regions that may have nothing to do with altering the activity of the target. It’s like tightly grabbing a pair of scissors by the blades instead of more loosely by the handle - a high affinity but non -functional interaction.

Chemotherapy Induced Peripheral Neuropathy Drugs in Development & and Key Players, 2022 - GlobalData


                Market Volatility to Drive Closer Collaboration Between Biotech Startups, Large Pharma
              

Form (Bio) Follows Function: Software Platform Targets Synbio - Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology News

Paving the road to functionally active antibody drugs - Pharmaphorum

Are you going to PEGS Boston Summit 2025?

Don’t miss Swastik Sen, PhD, presenting the poster “CB2-Specific Antibody Agonists for the Treatment of CIPN and Liver Fibrosis.”

See you there!





CC: Cambridge Healthtech Institute
#PEGSummit

 Yeast display of proteins in the periplasmic space 

Our FAST platform leverages engineered cells to evaluate hundreds of millions of antibodies simultaneously, assessing their ability to modify the activity of a target rather than merely binding to it.

By producing extensive sequence-activity datasets, FAST not only uncovers rare activators for challenging targets like G-protein-coupled receptors but also enables their AI-powered design.

East Bay company aims to tame a shrew to make better GLP-1 weight-loss drugs - San Francisco Business Times - The Business Journals


              What I’ve learned — the hard way — about AI in bio
            

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