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Distributed Bio was an immuno-engineering company that developed antibody discovery, engineering, and informatics tools and services for the life sciences research and drug discovery markets. It also provided a computational platform for the analysis and engineering of antibodies, TCRs, and peptides, and a discovery platform of antibody libraries. Distributed Bio was founded by Jacob Glanville, Giles Day and Chris Smith in 2010. They didn't seek traditional venture capital, but instead built a software platform on Amazon Web Services which allowed people globally to do computational immunology. The company re-incorporated as a California corporation in 2013. Through the licensing of their software platform, they built cash early to build an antibody discovery and optimization lab. From there Distributed Bio was able to license the data and the ability to engineer new medicines.
On January 1, 2021, Distributed Bio was acquired by Charles River Labs.
AbGenesis was initially built in 2012 and was Distributed Bio's original technology. The AbGenesis repertoire analysis and engineering environment enables analyses of individual cells to millions of B-cell and T-cell receptors, this includes linking of sequence and phenotype data. Users can search sequence data, identify candidate clones, analyze CDR diversity, analyze library selections, analyze hybridoma and immunizationa data, and monitor immune responses.
A Johnson & Johnson JLABS resident, Distributed Bio analyzed thousands of human immune systems with its machine learning platform called AbGenesis to have produced the SuperHuman library with 76 billion antibodies, including over 5,000 hits against each of the 26 targets in immuno-oncology and neurodegeneration within Distributed Bio's pipeline.
Pfizer and Boehringer Ingelheim have both licensedDistributed Bio's human monoclonal antibody library SuperHuman 2.0. Charles River partnered with Strategic bio to create an end-to-end platform for therapeutic antibody discovery and development.
The SuperHuman library allows for cross-species coverage, developability profiles for thermostability, aggregation potential and immunogenicity. In October of 2019, Distributed Bio announced the release of SuperHuman 3.0, which is a Single Light Chain (SLiC) library.
Distributed Bio's Tungsten 1.0 is a computationally optimized synthetic single domain library based on camelid repertoire. The library includes a camelid framework for reagent development and a human VH3-23 framework for therapeutic development.
Centivax is a universal vaccine technology that has shown promising results in testing against 39 viral strains in influenza including 1918 H1N1 Spanish flu, 1957 H2N2 Asian flu, 1968 H3N2 Hong Kong flu, 1977 H1N1 Russian flu, 2002 H3N2 Fujian flu, and 2009 H1N1 Swine flu. Using Distributed Bio's epitope focusing technology, a Centivax vaccine, is able to focus a subject's immune response against parts of pathogens unable to mutate and induce antibodies directed at those parts. Using pre-2009 viral flu strain information, Centivax was able to neutralize immunity against future pandemic and seasonal viral strains. This is primarily focused on influenza in the animal and human markets, but provides potential for other markets. Distributed Bio is reported to be using this technology to develop a coronavirus vaccine for for the 2019-nCoV outbreak. The coronavirus strain has more recently been renamed SARS-CoV-2 with the disease called COVID-19 (coronavirus disease).
On March 30, 2020, Centivax completed optimization of ultra-potent neutralizing antibodies against SARS-CoV-2.
Tumbler is Distributed Bio's antibody engineering technology which uses artificial intelligence to generate antibodies in greater quantity and shorter time than traditional methods.
Giles graduated from the University of Manchester with BSc in Biology and MSc in Bioinformatics. From there he joined Pfizer in the UK establishing Bioinformatics as a core discipline within the drug discovery programs.
Over the next 15 years Giles held numerous leadership postions in the Pfizer informatics organization. His teams developed ground-breaking solutions for HTS, med chem and target identification. In 2007 Pfizer created a new R&D division, the Biotechnology and Bioinnovation Center (BBC) in San Francisco. Giles was appointed head of informatics for the division leading a global team that supported all aspects of the BBC, from Prof. Goodmans Blackberry to running protein-protein docking at Amazon and supporting clinical trials.
Following the Wyeth merger and disbanding of the BBC, Giles, Jake and Chris decided that this was the ideal time to create Distributed Bio and bring their wealth of experience to new partners. Chris and Giles formed Distributed Bio LLC in 2011, and incorporated to Distributed Bio Inc with Chris, Giles and Jake in 2012.
