Toshiaki Maruyama, MD, PhD
Chief Scientific Officer
Antibody Technology
Abwiz Bio
Email: [email protected]
Biography
Toshi Maruyama has been trained in the field of phage display and antibody libraries over 30 years starting at Dennis Burton’s laboratory at The Scripps Research Institute. In the former positions, he made, selected, and screened numerous libraries successfully that were publisehd in top journals such as Nature Medicine, Nature Biotechnology, Science, Proceedings of the National Academic of Sciences, U.S.A., The Journal of Immunology. The libraries were made against infectious diseases, biodefense targets, allergy and autoimmune disorders, cancer targets, and immune regulatory targets. These include the isolation of first human neutralizing antibody KZ52 and macaque antibody JP3K11 against Ebola Zaire virus, broadly neutralizing antibodies against hepatitis C virus, human anti-anthrax toxin PA83/PA63 antibodies, human neutralizing antibodies to Venezuelan Equine Encephalomyelitis virus, and broadly neutralizing antibodies to COVID-19. Toshi Maruyama has invented unique cloning methods to maintain maximum antibody repertoire diversity from the immune source. The current cloning method (US 9,890,414) is successfully applied in human, mouse, humanized mouse, alpaca/llama, marmoset, and rabbit libraries. In addition, selection strategies, along with a uniquely engineered phagemid vector optimized for the expression of rabbit Fab fragments with CK1 light chains in bacterial cells, assure isolation of large panel of specific clones against a given target. He has also established a technology platform to engineer humanized clones for best affinity and specificity for therapeutic antibody development (patent pending). This technology was applied to the isolation and development of broadly neutralizing humanized antibodies to SARS-CoV-2.