A case study on avoiding late-stage failure through high-throughput screening and whole-blood target engagement.
The most expensive mistake in drug development is not failing; it is failing late. When a candidate fails in Phase II or III, millions of dollars and years of development are lost. Often, these failures occur because we lacked definitive proof that the drug engaged its target in the patient’s actual physiological environment.
In a recent webinar hosted by Pelago Bioscience, AbbVie scientists Shitalben Patel and Dr. Jami Erickson revealed how they are successfully closing this gap. By innovating upon their licensed CETSA® technology, AbbVie has developed internal workflows that provide “Go/No-Go” confidence from early screening all the way to clinical samples.
Front-Loading Success: The High-Throughput Engine
AbbVie has transformed CETSA® from a validation tool into a high-throughput screening engine. By integrating Flow Cytometry with CETSA®, Dr. Erickson’s team screened roughly 2,500 compounds, identifying binders that other biochemical assays missed.
- The Takeaway: This approach filters out false positives early. AbbVie invests resources only in compounds proven to engage the target in live, intact cells, significantly improving the quality of candidates entering the pipeline.
The Clinical Game-Changer: Whole-Blood Analysis
Perhaps the most critical innovation for clinical operations is AbbVie’s development of Whole-Blood CETSA® (using MSD and AlphaLISA platforms). Traditional target engagement often requires isolating PBMCs, which is a costly, labour-intensive process that complicates logistics at clinical sites.
- Operational Efficiency: AbbVie’s new protocol works with less than 100 µL of whole blood and requires no PBMC isolation.
- Logistical Flexibility: The team demonstrated that samples remain stable even after freezing. This allows clinical sites worldwide to easily collect samples and ship them to a central lab for analysis, ensuring data consistency across multi-site trials.
A Partnership for Innovation
It is important to note that the specific Flow-based and Whole-Blood assays presented are proprietary workflows developed by AbbVie under its CETSA® license from Pelago. They are not standard services, but rather a sound proof of the versatility of the core CETSA® technology.
AbbVie’s work demonstrates that when R&D teams are empowered with the right platforms, they can develop tailored solutions that directly address the industry’s most critical challenge: proving target engagement in the patient.
See the data behind AbbVie’s decision-making process and learn how they are using these innovations to de-risk their portfolio.
Watch the webinar here:
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