The foundation for our achievements and potential is the integration of several advanced platform technologies based on synthetic peptide design and focused around functional antigenics. Functional antigenics identifies antigens and antibodies that function for the treatment and prevention of disease. We have harnessed the power of functional antigenics through our proprietary platform technologies. These enable us to select useful protein sequences from public databases and then identify highly specific sites within those sequences as our targets. We then modify these sequences with our proprietary immunostimulants to produce our designer peptide UBITh® immunogens. The peptide immunogens are prepared as vaccines and immunotherapeutics in our proprietary vaccine formulations so as to provoke the production of highly specific and potent antibodies. Our products are less likely than conventional drugs to have adverse side effects because they have been designed to work through the specificity of the body’s own immune system. We also employ a proprietary technology to make monoclonal antibodies of high specificity and affinity that can provide immunotherapeutic effects more rapidly than the vaccine approach, but for higher cost.
We use the fruits of biomedical research to select target proteins whose functions are known. Then we model the target protein and reproduce candidate sites as synthetic peptides. We select only those potential products that will rapidly yield to our platform technologies in functional antigenics. We avoid the direct use of peptides as drugs because peptide drugs have poor stability and bioavailability in the body. Rather, we refine our site-directed peptide antigens to act indirectly through the immune system, as UBITh® immunogens for the stimulation and production of site-specific antibodies. Our immunogens are chemically defined molecules manufactured by synthetic peptide chemistry, and they are presented to the immune system using a chemically defined vaccine delivery system that has been customized for UBITh® peptide immunogens. Our technologies are fast in execution and directed to immediate product applications. UBI product development pathways follow through the empirical procedures of immunology, while relying on our proprietary processes for optimizing vaccine immunopotency. We have effectively protected our proprietary technologies by obtaining worldwide patent protection.
The UBITh platform technologies in functional antigenics proceed through a series of steps to:
1) identify functional antigenic sites on ligand and receptor proteins through molecular modeling and our own immunological process of site-directed serology,
2) mimic those sites as synthetic peptide immunogens through outstanding molecular design ,
3) significantly amplify therapeutic immune responses to our synthetic peptide immunogens with the key UBITh® technology for immune enhancement.
The UBITh® technology significantly amplifies the therapeutic immune responses to our vaccines and immunotherapeutics. The UBITh®-enhanced peptide immunogens are then formulated into adjuvanted vaccine preparations with our proprietary vaccine delivery systems. We formulate our immunotherapeutics and vaccines for rapid responsiveness followed by long-term duration of immune responses where it is advantageous, such as for the immunotherapy of allergy, Alzheimer's Disease and certain autoimmune diseases. Our functional antigenic sites are also measured by matching site-directed diagnostic kits for serological or cellular responses by ELISA or ELISPOT.
The advantages provided by our technologies in functional antigenics have placed us among the leaders in developing and commercializing immunologically active products for diseases amenable to immunological intervention. Functional antigenics is supported at UBI by chemistry groups skilled in the disciplines of peptide chemistry, organic chemistry, immunochemistry and polymer chemistry, by our team of molecular and structural biologists for molecular modeling and the designing of peptide immunogens and humanized antibodies and by our vaccine development group skilled in immunology, virology, cell biology, functional assays and animal model establishment, adjuvant technology, and vaccine formulation. UBI scientists emphasize the coordination of the requisite technologies to rapidly convert research findings into biological products and product candidates. These products are categorized below as immunotherapeutics and vaccines, diagnostics, and veterinary products.