About
Ian Wilkinson is the founder and sole proprietor of mAbvice. Through this Ian provides advice and support to companies and academics developing biological therapeutics, most commonly antibodies. Relationships with clients can take a number of potential forms, such as the examples below:
- Ad hoc consulting on an hourly or daily rate. Providing support on topics such as: antibody engineering; design of bispecific antibodies; Fc fusion proteins; half-life extension; humanization; BBB delivery; and transient expression
- Consulting on a specific project for specified period of time
- Participation on Scientific Advisory Boards or Boards of Directors for biotechnology companies
- Generation or editing of technical reports, reviews or documents
- Participation in patent litigation cases as an expert witness
If you are interested in working with mAbvice in any capacity, or for further information, please use the contact form.
IAN WILKINSON BIOGRAPHY
If you want a snapshot of my career history and the positions I have held then I suggest scrolling to the very bottom of this website and clicking the LinkedIn button to go direct to my personal LinkedIn profile. This biography is more detailed and adds a bit more colour and context.
From my mid-teens I always had my eyes on a career in the bio-pharmaceutical industry but it wasn't until my Masters in Applied Biomolecular Technology at the University of Nottingham that I really discovered specifically where I wanted to focus my attention - antibodies. I was fascinated by a series of lectures on antibodies and techniques to analyse antibody structure-function relationship. At this point in time it was still debatable whether antibodies had or ever would reach the potential that had long been promised as "silver bullet" therapeutic drugs, but learning about the story of Campath-1H in particular was an inspiration to me (see here for an excellent article on the story behind getting this antibody from initial concept through to market approval). So, following my Masters I undertook an industrial funded PhD in Prof. Mark Carr's lab at the University of Leicester (UK) developing NMR methods to determine the structure of antibody-antigen complexes (specifically a single chain Fv-IL1B complex, see final structure here). This work gave me an insight into how structural biology can be applied to antibody engineering and my preference ever since has been to utilise this knowledge in what I like to think of as rationale structure guided antibody engineering. 3-4 years of working with scFvs also gave me an in depth knowledge of the folding and expression challenges often posed by these unique antibody fragments.
My PhD was funded by UCB, or Celltech as they were at the time, and the experience of working with industrial partners reaffirmed my desire to work in bio-pharma drug discovery. The natural course of progression would have been to go and work for UCB but the financial crisis of 2007-2009 had hit all companies hard and redundancies were more common place than new hires. Fortunately I managed to land on my feet with an initial 1 year position at MedImmune in Cambridge, UK (formerly Cambridge Antibody Technology). Over the course of approximately 4 years at MedImmune I worked on a very wide range of projects and activities:
- Development of half-antibodies through abrogation of CH3 driven Fc dimerization. Initially developed for an inflammatory disease project but ultimately became a platform technology to generate any half-antibody or monomeric Fc fusion protein.
- Protease-Fc fusion protein developed to degrade amyloid beta as a potential Alzheimer's treatment
- Blood brain barrier technology platform development
- Experience designing, expressing, purifying and testing antibody fragments, bispecifics and antibody drug-conjugates (ADCs)
- Management of transient CHO production of early stage candidates (milligram to gram quantities)
- Interaction with CMC teams on the challenges of transferring non-standard biological molecules from early stage research through to development
After a number of successful years at MedImmune, including 2 promotions, I decided it was time for a change. I learnt a huge amount in my time there and will always be grateful for that but I was a small part of a very large organisation, with MedImmune being the biologics division of AstraZeneca. I was searching for a smaller outfit where I could have a broader impact. It was at this point the opportunity to join Absolute Antibody came along. At the time the company was really nothing more than an idea. It had been incorporated but hadn't yet received seed investment. The founders - Dr. Nicholas Hutchings, Prof. Geoff Hale, Prof. Neil Barclay and Tim Bernard - had a vision for the use of recombinant antibodies in the research and diagnostic space. Now this seems like an obvious business plan but at the time it went against all other companies in the market. Monoclonal antibodies in the reagent and diagnostic markets had always been produced by hybridomas. Unlike in therapeutics there had never been a need to switch to recombinant production as happened in the 1980s for drug development. The founders strongly believed that the quality, reproducibility and technical superiority of this approach should be brought into the market they were familiar with. Years later there would be Nature articles on this topic (for example here and here) and a whole stream of larger suppliers gradually switching from hybridoma production to recombinant. At the time though Absolute Antibody stood alone. I took a large risk in joining such a small outfit with very modest funding and it was a move away from the pharma industry but I saw it as an exciting opportunity to build something from scratch. I was also keen to work with a team that included some of the very early pioneers of monoclonal antibodies from the 1970s, 80s and 90s, including work on Campath-1H, the antibody I had studied years earlier.
In December 2012 I started work in an empty lab at Absolute Antibody. For the first 6 months I largely worked alone as our CEO was only working 1 day a week splitting his responsibilities with his other company. As with any startup it was a case of doing whatever was required. Developing the technologies that would eventually become service offerings was clearly a primary responsibility but my role covered marketing, website development, sales, IT, HR, H&S and strategy. On the latter point, I was responsible for altering the business model of the organisation. The founders had a clear vision focusing on the reagents and IVD market but I felt they were missing an opportunity to sell services to the bio-pharma market that I had just come out of. The hybridoma sequencing, transient expression and recombinant antibody engineering technologies I was developing in the lab could serve both markets and I saw the contract research organisation (CRO) side of the business as an opportunity to fund what we anticipated to be very slow sales growth of a reagents catalog. This proved to be an excellent decision and the custom-services business flourished while we took our time to add depth to our reagents catalogue and build the brand awareness needed to pull customers away from the more well-established players. Over the next few years the company grew exponentially in terms of staff and revenue. My role gradually transitioned out of the lab into a Chief Scientific Officer overseeing the scientific development of the organisation but I always maintained very strong links with sales and marketing. Although I don't like to think of myself as a sales person I've always viewed the process of selling a scientific service as a very consultative process. You need to truly understand what the client wants (they aren't always sure themselves!) and then mould your service around what they need and what you can deliver. This requires transparency, trust and both scientific and business acumen.
To summarise the work I performed at Absolute Antibody in a concise manner is challenging but it is perhaps best encapsulated by The Periodic Table of Antibodies that is prominently displayed on their website. This showcases over 140 different molecular design formats we engineered for our customers (Note: at the time of my leaving the number was 170 but keeping the website up to date is always a challenge!). I think very few CROs can boast this level of protein engineering expertise. It was a real pleasure to support clients across academia, bio-pharma (both large and small) and IVD in progressing their projects and achieving their specific goals.
At the end of 2020 Absolute Antibody was acquired by LS Bio and after much consideration I stepped down as CSO to pursue other business interests, which are described briefly below with links to the respective websites at the bottom of this page.
Over the last decade I have thoroughly enjoyed working with clients from across all sectors but particularly those in early stage startup companies. I find that my mix of scientific understanding of the drug discovery process, in particular around antibody engineering, as well as the commercial knowledge of building one successful company and involved with another, enable me to provide insightful advice, support and strategic direction. This is what drove me to establish mAbvice, in the hope I could continue providing this kind of support to those looking to develop life-changing biological therapeutics.
The businesses I am directly involved are:
Gamma Proteins - A new company I launched in early 2024 to supply recombinant proteins to the research reagent market. In particular we focus on providing high quality and fully validated Fc receptors (FcgR and FcRn) at a fraction of the price of other suppliers.
mAbsolve - This company is based on a novel Fc silencing technology I developed while at Absolute Antibody and that we span out into a separate company in 2020. I act in my capacity as a founder and Director of mAbsolve, in particular helping them commercialize their technology within the bio-pharma sector.
Antibodyhumanization.com - This brand and website sits under my consulting work at mAbvice and was built to enable me to expand on the topic of humanization. Although the site offers an in silico humanization service it was primarily built as an educational tool to help demystify the process and terminology around antibody humanization.
Antibodyengineering.com - Again this sits under my work at mAbvice. Through this site users can freely access an Excel based tool for antibody sequence analysis and engineering. Identify CDRs, assess sequence liabilities, introduce Fc domain mutations, chimerize onto almost any backbone and a whole lot more all within a single easy to use Excel spreadsheet.
