Researcher & entrepreneur Sara Mangsbo: ”We want our progress to make a difference in people’s lives”

Antibody-based drugs are today the fastest growing class of new drugs approved for treatment. They come with numerous advantages: Clinically positive results, few side effects and effective use of the body’s immune defense. But for a long time they also presented researchers with the challenge to predict the impact of potential drugs on our immune cells. Therefore, Sara Mangsbo’s launch of the ID.Flow® method became the long-awaited breakthrough that further shortened the path from idea to patient.

“As a PhD student, myself and Professor Thomas Tötterman started to sketch out how we could develop the Chandler Loop model to include studies of interactions between blood and new types of drugs. At the time, there was a great need for additional methods, and we succeeded in creating a platform where we, using fresh whole blood, mapped infusion reactions even before the first test-in-human. Today, this service is offered via Immuneed, a company with clients across the world,” says Sara Mangsbo, Professor of Protein and Antibody Drugs at Uppsala University's Department of Pharmacy.

ID.Flow® enables fewer animal experiments and unforeseen side effects during clinical trials. With the results also generating data to support decisions on which drug candidates to continue forward with, it has accelerated the development of new therapies. Today, Immuneed's work is key to several highly publicized advances, and recently Sara's team used the method to study the safety profile of a new antibody, concluding that it does not cause infusion reactions.

“We have designed the antibody using the ADAC technology platform, which has potential to enable tailored treatments against a range of tumor diseases. Our strategy is to inject designed antibodies that, loaded with artificial protein fragments, trigger the immune system to attack cancer cells. In November, we published results in Nature Communications confirming that our model really works,” says Sara Mangsbo.

The current development of ADAC is primarily conducted at Strike Pharma, co-founded by Sara Mangsbo with funding by capital fund Eir Ventures. Additional opportunities are continuously identified, and with support from STUNS and the Swedish Agency for Economic and Regional Development, the team is now exploring the platform's potential for targeted delivery of oligonucleotides, according to many a cornerstone of future healthcare.

“We consistently strive to translate our progress into innovations that make a difference in people's lives. We have already come a long way with ADAC, and if we succeed in broadening our platform to targeted delivery of oligonucleotide-based drugs, my hope is that we will contribute to open the doors to a whole new future,” states Sara Mangsbo.

text: Magnus Alsne, photo: Mikael Wallerstedt, Pernilla Sjöholm a o