PhIP-Seq: Antibody Profiles for Next-Gen Diagnostics

offer_PhIP

What if a blood sample could reveal which antigens the immune system remembers? PhIP-Seq enables high-resolution antibody profiling across microbial, viral, food, autoimmune and tumor-associated epitopes. acib is looking for partners to translate this discovery power into compact diagnostic, stratification and companion-diagnostic panels.

Background

Many immune-mediated diseases are difficult to diagnose, classify or predict at an early stage. In inflammatory bowel disease, autoimmune disorders, post-infectious syndromes, cancer, allergy and chronic inflammatory conditions, patients may carry disease-relevant immune signatures before a clear clinical phenotype emerges. Conventional antibody tests usually measure responses against a small number of predefined antigens and can miss broader patterns linked to microbiome interaction, infection history, food antigens, autoimmunity or tumour-associated epitopes.

Technology

Phage Immunoprecipitation Sequencing (PhIP-Seq) can screen antibodies binding against hundreds of thousands of antigen fragments in parallel, far beyond the scale of conventional antibody assays. After incubation with serum or blood samples, antibody-bound phages are immunoprecipitated and identified by next-generation sequencing. The result is an antigen-resolved antibody profile: a high-resolution map of immune recognition. Dr. Thomas Vogl and his team at MedUni Vienna have internationally leading expertise in PhIP-Seq, synthetic antigen libraries, microbiome–immune system interactions, infection-associated immune signatures, autoimmune and chronic inflammatory diseases, multi-omics integration and machine-learning-based analysis of complex antibody repertoires. Published studies show that antibody epitope repertoires against human microbiota are highly individual, systematically interpretable and stable over time. In inflammatory bowel disease, antigen-resolved antibody profiles revealed characteristic signatures for Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis, with additional studies indicating that disease-associated antibody patterns can already be detected years before clinical diagnosis.

Offer

Together with industrial partners, acib and MedUni Vienna can support indication-specific feasibility projects from immune-discovery to diagnostic-panel development. Possible project activities include selection of disease use case and clinical cohorts, PhIP-Seq screening, bioinformatic and AI-based identification of disease-associated antibody patterns, reduction to compact antigen panels, transfer into scalable assay formats such as ELISA, multiplex immunoassays, Luminex or peptide arrays, and validation in independent sample sets. IP generated within the collaboration can be fully transferred to the industrial partner.

Experts:

Dr. Thomas Vogl

Development status:

Technology Readiness Level 4
(technology validated in the lab)

Keywords:

PhIP-Seq, Antibody profiling, Antigen-resolved diagnostics, Immune signatures, IVD development, Companion diagnostics, Microbiome immunology, Autoimmunity, Inflammatory bowel disease, AI diagnostics, Multiplex immunoassays, Biomarker panels

Picture: acib, AI-generated

Dr. Martin U. Trinker
Director Business Development & Fundraising
Krenngasse 37
8010 Graz
+43 720 270664 17