Twist Bioscience Corporation, a company enabling customers to succeed through its offering of high-quality synthetic DNA using its silicon platform, and Kriya Therapeutics, Inc., a fully integrated company pioneering novel technologies and therapeutics in gene therapy, today announced an antibody discovery agreement for antibodies delivered using adeno-associated viral (AAV) gene therapy in therapeutic oncology applications.

“We believe that vectorized antibodies have the potential to transform the treatment of a range of serious diseases, particularly within the field of oncology,” said Shankar Ramaswamy, M.D., Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Kriya. “By combining Twist’s best-in-class antibody libraries and discovery expertise with Kriya’s proprietary, computationally-enabled vector engineering platform, we can accelerate the advancement of novel gene therapies that can be combined with other modalities in oncology, including current standards-of-care.”

Twist Biopharma, a division of Twist Bioscience, expects to leverage its antibody discovery and optimization platform to discover novel antibodies against specific targets of interest that will be engineered into Kriya’s proprietary gene therapy technology platform for durable and targeted delivery.

“Targeted delivery of antibodies using gene therapy could open a new therapeutic channel that enables precise treatment where needed locally,” said Emily M. Leproust, Ph.D., CEO and co-founder of Twist Bioscience. “Viral vectors provide an expedited route to deliver much needed proteins to patients over traditional biologics development. Kriya’s AAV technology is world-leading so we are very pleased to partner with them in this field.”