A team led by Professor Pranjal Chandra at IIT Roorkee’s Department of Biosciences and Bioengineering has introduced AbScan, a next-generation antibody discovery platform that promises to reshape how diagnostic tools and therapeutic antibodies are developed. The breakthrough addresses one of the major bottlenecks in modern biomedicine: the slow, labour-intensive, and often low-success-rate process of generating high-quality antibodies against clinically relevant targets.

Traditional methods such as hybridoma technology and phage display are time-consuming, limited in throughput, and frequently fail to produce antibodies with the desired affinity, specificity, or manufacturability. AbScan overcomes these limitations by combining yeast surface display a technique that presents millions to billions of antibody fragments on yeast cells with ultra-deep next-generation sequencing and machine learning-driven selection.

The workflow begins with the creation of highly diverse synthetic antibody libraries (scFv or nanobody formats) displayed on yeast. These libraries are screened against immobilised target antigens using fluorescence-activated cell sorting (FACS), enriching for binders with high affinity and specificity. Deep sequencing then captures the full sequence diversity of the enriched population, and proprietary AI algorithms analyse the sequence-activity landscape to predict optimal candidates for expression, validation, and further engineering.

In validation studies published in Nature Communications, AbScan successfully identified high-affinity antibodies against multiple clinically important targets, including cancer biomarkers (HER2, PD-L1), viral proteins (SARS-CoV-2 spike), and autoimmune antigens. The platform consistently outperformed conventional methods in terms of speed (discovery in days instead of months), hit rate, and antibody quality producing candidates with nanomolar to picomolar affinities and excellent developability profiles.

Professor Pranjal Chandra, who led the research, explained the significance: “Antibodies are the workhorses of diagnostics and therapeutics, but discovering the right ones has remained slow and expensive. AbScan changes that equation by combining massive library diversity, high-throughput screening, and intelligent computational selection. We can now go from target to validated antibody candidate in a fraction of the time previously required.”

The platform has already attracted interest from diagnostic companies and biopharma partners seeking faster development of companion diagnostics, imaging agents, and therapeutic leads. IIT Roorkee has filed multiple patents covering the core technology and library design, and the team is preparing to license the platform while continuing internal development of diagnostic and therapeutic candidates.

This innovation arrives at a critical juncture for India’s biotech sector, where domestic capability in advanced biologics and diagnostics is a national priority. By reducing dependence on imported antibodies and reagents, AbScan supports the Atmanirbhar Bharat vision and strengthens India’s position in global precision medicine.