From antibody discovery to peptide diagnostics: watch Biotome’s webinars
How do you turn an interesting antibody response into an assay that works beyond the discovery platform? Two Biotome webinars, hosted by our long-standing partner PEPperPRINT and now available on YouTube, explore that journey from different starting points.
CEO Dr Samuel Lundin shares the development of Helitope, our peptide-based anti-CagA IgG ELISA. CTO Luke Marshall takes a step further back, showing how our team approaches biomarker discovery when the target antigen is not yet known. Together, the sessions offer a look inside Biotome’s approach to precision serology: finding informative antibody targets, testing the evidence and translating selected peptides into practical assays.
Samuel Lundin: From epitope mapping to the Helitope diagnostic
Samuel’s webinar begins with a question at the heart of our work: could measuring antibodies to carefully selected regions of a protein give a clearer result than measuring responses to the whole protein?
Using the H. pylori CagA protein as a case study, he explains how PEPperPRINT peptide microarrays helped map antibody-binding regions and identify the peptides best able to distinguish CagA-positive and CagA-negative samples. One revealing finding is that antibody recognition alone does not make an epitope useful for an assay. Many CagA epitopes attracted antibody responses, but only a minority provided useful discrimination between the sample groups. Selecting those informative regions was central to the development of Helitope.
The session also explores why the final assay uses four selected peptides, how sequence variation influenced their selection, and the practical challenge of moving peptides from a microarray onto an ELISA plate. Samuel introduces PepLock™, Biotome’s peptide-based immobilisation technology, and shows how it helped address surface attachment and background signal in the tested assays.
Watch for the decisions behind the finished product: which epitopes to keep, how to present them and what it takes to move from discovery data to a manufactured kit. Since the webinar was recorded, Helitope RUO has launched and is available internationally through Antibodies Incorporated. It is for research use only.
Luke Marshall: Finding useful peptide targets when you do not know where to start
Luke’s webinar uses idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis as a case study to tackle an earlier challenge: how do you narrow a broad antibody screen into a manageable set of candidates for assay development?
Starting with approximately 375,000 peptide tiles in a PhIP-Seq screen, the workflow combines immunology expertise, computational analysis and practical peptide-selection criteria to design a focused PEPperPRINT array of around 1,200 peptides. Subsequent analysis identifies 28 candidates for further development. A particularly interesting highlight is the opportunity to look beyond the original IgG screen. The peptide arrays allowed the team to examine additional antibody isotypes, including IgA, revealing patterns that the initial screen could not directly measure.
Luke also discusses how to challenge candidate selection across cohorts, assess whether a result depends on individual strong responders, and consider synthesis and assay compatibility early. The 28 candidates are a starting point for further validation, with independent testing needed to establish performance in a targeted assay.
Explore the science behind our assays
For researchers working in antibody profiling, biomarker discovery or assay development, these sessions show how discovery technologies, data analysis and surface immobilisation fit together. They share the reasoning behind the work, including why a strong screening signal is only the beginning.
Thank you to PEPperPRINT for hosting both webinars and for their continuing contribution to our discovery programs.
Contact Biotome to discuss peptide biomarker discovery, assay development or PepLock-enabled immobilisation.
