About ImmunoPrecise Antibodies

ImmunoPrecise Antibodies Ltd. operates as an innovation-driven, technology platform company. The company supports its pharmaceutical and biotechnology company partners in their quest to discover and develop novel, therapeutic antibodies against all classes of disease targets. The company aims to transform the conventional, multi-vendor, product development model by bringing innovative and high-throughput technologies to its partners, incorporating the advantages of diverse antibody repertoires with its therapeutic antibody discovery suite of technologies, to exploit antibodies of broad epitope coverage, multiple antibody formats, valency, and size, and to discover antibodies against multiple/rare epitopes. The company offers comprehensive support to its partners, starting with customized, computational project design, antigen preparation, an on-site vivarium, immunization services, high-throughput discovery platforms, functional antibody testing, lead candidate selection, antibody optimization, antibody engineering and manufacturing, all under one contract. The company has achieved organic revenue growth through market penetration and service diversification in the biologics, contract research organization (CRO) space, as well as accretive growth through strategic expansion of its operations in Europe, by acquiring and integrating innovative technologies, and through investments in research and development (R&D). Products and Services CRO Services The company’s CRO services include, but are not limited to, proprietary B cell sorting, screening and sequencing; custom, immune and naïve phage display production and screening; expertise with transgenic animals and multi-species antibody discovery; bi-specific, tri-specific, VHH (naïve llama), and VNAR (shark) (variable new antigen receptor) antibody manufacturing; DNA cloning, protein and antibody downstream processing, purification in gram scale levels, characterization and validation; antibody characterization on label-free biosensors, antibody engineering; transient and stable cell line generation; antibody optimization and humanization; hybridoma production with multiplexed, high-throughput screening and clone-picking; cryopreservation; and custom antigen modeling, design and manufacturing. The company’s wholly owned subsidiaries, IPA (Canada) Ltd. (IPA Canada) and IPA Europe, have both been designated as approved CROs for the world’s leading, transgenic animal platform producing human antibodies, and exercised an advantage in optimizing services for various transgenic animal vendors. The company made strategic investments in R&D activities to develop proprietary technologies enabling the application of their B cell Select and DeepDisplay platforms to address a range of transgenic animal species and strains and efficiently deliver fully-human, clinically relevant antibodies to its clients. The company’s key CRO services are set forth in detail below: B cell Select: In 2018, the company built on its decade of experience in single B cell interrogation to offer B cell services in both North America and Europe on species agnostic platforms, including the use of transgenic, humanized animals. These services are offered for a broad range of therapeutically relevant protein families, including GPCRs and other challenging, membrane-spanning proteins. The company’s B cell Select platforms enable antibody screening directly from B cells, facilitating the analysis of a more diverse set of antibodies, and for faster, deeper screening compared to traditional technologies. By adding a high throughput, label-free Octet HTX biosensor (under the tradenames ForteBio, Sartorius) at IPA Canada, the company uses a state-of-the-art high throughput platform that facilitates the rapid characterization and development of lead antibody candidates and addresses the need for increased speed and sample throughput when characterizing large panels of therapeutic antibody candidates, which are generated with its B cell or library-based platforms. Phage Display: The company’s phage display services are based on building custom immune libraries from multiple species, including transgenic animals, or, alternatively, the selection of antigen-specific, recombinant antibody fragments from its proprietary human or llama phage libraries. The proprietary libraries have been made from human auto-immune (diseased) patients and naïve (healthy donors) scFv (single chain fragment variable) repertoires, as well as from naïve llama (VHH) repertoires. Custom immune libraries are prepared from blood, spleen, lymph nodes, and bone marrow of immunized animals and aim to capture the entire immune repertoire for panning, rescue, and identification of unique antibodies with pre-specified characteristics. DeepDisplay: A powerful new technology utilizing a combination of transgenic animal platforms, like e.g. Ligand’s OmniAb, and IPA’s custom phage display antibody selection. Abthena Bispecifics: The company’s bispecific Abthena technology complements its diverse discovery process, integrating seamlessly with the Artemis Intelligence Metadata (AIM) capabilities, to enable rapid turnaround on additional algorithmic outputs in therapeutic antibody optimization, stability, affinity, and manufacturability. LucinaTech Humanization: The company provides a robust and efficient antibody humanization service, which consistently retains affinity and specificity levels. The approach is based on state-of-the-art in silico antibody modeling to identify essential framework and CDR residues for grafting onto a human antibody framework. Affinity Maturation: Antibody affinity is important in therapeutic and diagnostic applications. The company’s affinity maturation service can improve antibody affinities. The company applies different strategies to increase the affinity of the antibody, including gene shuffling and random mutagenesis. Immunization, Hybridoma, Sequencing: The company offers antibody development services, including a variety of immunization methods: Rapid Prime immunization, DNA immunization (NonaVac), cell-based immunization (ModiVacc), electro-fusion and hybridoma generation using semi-solid media and clone picking, as well as high throughput, multiplexed screening methods. With ImmunoProtect, the DNA sequence of the antibody is determined and can be used to express the antibody recombinantly. rPEx Protein Manufacturing: The company provides large-scale production of recombinant mammalian proteins and antibodies for research and non-clinical applications. With a track record of successfully producing difficult-to-express proteins and antibodies (e.g. Fc-fusion proteins and bispecific antibodies), the company offers gram scale production with low endotoxin levels. Cell Line Development: Using its proprietary vectors, the company offers stable cell line development services (non GMP) of target proteins or antibodies adapted to specific growth conditions and media. Therapeutic Discovery Program While CRO services are the mainstay of the company, IPA has worked continuously on building an IP estate and portfolio of proprietary methods and physical assets through collaborations, acquisitions and in-licensing. The company has strategically invested in the development and licensing of antibody discovery platforms and related IP assets. The onboarding of existing assets with regard to equipment, technologies, IP and licenses within the company’s European Union operations has been compounded by active research and development at all operational sites over the past two years, including the on-going development of new service offerings rolled out in the fiscal years 2020 and 2021, but more notably, internal discovery programs focused on novel, therapeutic antibodies, primarily in the field of immuno-oncology. The company formed Talem Therapeutics LLC (Talem), based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to support its internal and partnered therapeutic discovery programs. Talem offers strategic partnerships with pharma and biotech companies and is the only company to offer these services as a partnership in OmniAb transgenic animals using their own license. The depth and speed of IPA’s offerings enables Talem to customize each program and leverages the company’s expertise and technologies in the antibody discovery. Locations of Operations The company’s operations are carried out globally in Victoria, British Columbia (IPA Canada) and Utrecht and Oss, the Netherlands (IPA Europe), and Fargo, North Dakota (IPA USA). Intellectual Property The company has initiated the protection of new innovation in its product pipeline and has trademarked its ImmunoProtect, Rapid Prime, DeepDisplay, NonaVac, Abthena, Artemis, ModiVacc, LucinaTec, B cell Select and rPEx technologies. The company has filed four patent applications (CA 2964907, CA 2947878, CA 2965017 and CA 2940065) relating to its proprietary technology and products, and has filed a provisional patent to protect its PolyTope SARS-CoV-2 intellectual property. Its IP strategy has been to protect its intellectual property primarily through a combination of trade secrets and copyright. The company continues to develop new products, such as novel biotherapeutics in a broad range of indications. New screening methodologies, screening services and data mining methodologies may also provide an expansion and new commercial opportunities for the company. Competition The company’s major CRO competitors include Abveris Inc., Genovac GmbH, Antibody Solutions, Genscript Biotech Corp, and Lake Pharma Inc. (part of Curia Inc.). Foreign Operations The company conducts business activities in Canada and a significant portion of the company’s business activities depend on foreign operations in the Netherlands and the United States. The company distributes and offers its products and services globally. Significant portions of its revenues are from global sales. Research and Development The company’s research and development costs were $6.7 million for the year ended April 30, 2022. Regulation The company is required to comply with the European Union General Data Protection Regulation. The company is organized under the laws of the Province of British Columbia, with its registered place of business in Canada, some of its directors and officers reside outside the United States and the majority of its assets and all or a portion of the assets of these persons might be located outside the United States. The company is a ‘foreign private issuer’ as such term is defined in Rule 405 under the United States Securities Act of 1933, and is permitted, under a multijurisdictional disclosure system adopted by the United States and Canada, to prepare its disclosure documents filed under the United States Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (U.S. Exchange Act) in accordance with Canadian disclosure requirements. Under the U.S. Exchange Act, the company is subject to reporting obligations that, in certain respects, are detailed and less frequent than those of United States domestic reporting companies. History ImmunoPrecise Antibodies Ltd. was incorporated in 1983.