Antagonis is a privately held company based in Graz/Austria that develops protein-based glycan antagonists GAGbodies™ for immuno-oncology applications

GAGbodies™

Our GAGbodies™ protect glycans selectively from participating in the chemokine-mediated metastatic process.

Glycosaminoglycans (GAGs) are involved in a plethora of diseases such as inflammation,
fibrinogenesis, wound healing, oncology & metastasis, blood coagulation, MI & restenosis, MS &
neurodegeneration. These highly charged and linear polysaccharides represent a novel class of
therapeutic targets which cannot be explored by biologics such as monoclonal antibodies because
of the lack of suitable and specific antigens. We are therefore using the recognition sites of natural
GAG-binding proteins and engineer them towards high affinity ligand binding. For this purpose
we have generated a unique library of human GAG oligosaccharides which are used for screening
and optimising our GAGbodies™. Target specificity and off-target effects are tested by our ELICO
technology. We have collected the large pool of all GAG-binding proteins in our GlycAffibaseTM which
provides the basis for our directed GAGbody™ engineering.

Antagonis is located in a research-driven environment on the Campus of the Karl Franzens-University
Graz where internationally recognised GAG research has been successfully ongoing over the last
ten years, which was funded by national and international public organisations as well as by private
venture capital. Antagonis has a close collaboration with a local manufacturer who provides the
Pichia pastoris expression expertise as well as the scaffolding technology for serum half life extension
of our GAGbodies™. Although Antagonis is positioned as a platform company our lead product is an
MCP-1-based GAGbody™ which shows excellent activity in a murine metastasis model.

We are Antagonis

Andreas J. Kungl is founder and scientific director of Antagonis. He is Professor at the University of Graz and, before founding Antagonis, he was CSO of ProtAffin Biotechnologie AG. Before coming to Graz he worked at the Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry (Martinsried, Germany) and at the Novartis Research Institute (Vienna, Austria). Andreas is joined on the Management board by Frank S Walsh.  Frank is founder and CEO of Ossianix and before he was heading Drug Discovery at Wyeth where he developed 90 clinical candidates including 25 biologics.

GAGbodies™

our development candidates are selected from our GlycAffibaseTM which
contains all GAG-binding proteins (currently 5500) plus the sequence and structural
information required for our engineering approach to generate unique protein-based glycan
antagonists. Our GAGbodies™ are screened against a human GAG oligosaccharide library to
select for candidates with highest affinity and best target profile. All our GAGbodies™ are
fused to a protein scaffold which guarantees long serum half life.

Partnering

We are actively seeking discussion´s with potential partners for our internal pipeline of GAGbodies™ and have additional capacity to partner with Pharma and/or Biotech companies on their targets.

For more information on these opportunities, please contact
Andreas Kungl at
akungl@antagonis.com