Industry Biotechnology Website www.zymeworks.com Headquarters Vancouver, Canada Type of business Private | Products Pharmaceuticals Founded 2003 Number of employees 63 (35 PhDs) Key person Donald L. Drakeman | |
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Key people Ali Tehrani
Donald L. Drakeman | ||
Zymeworks Inc. is a privately held biotechnology company based in Vancouver, British Columbia, that develops protein therapeutics for the treatment of cancer as well as for autoimmune and inflammatory diseases. The products are based upon the company's molecular modeling software for optimizing protein structure. In 2014, Zymeworks raised $44 million across various funding rounds according to PitchBook, placing it among the top 10 HealthTech businesses in the world to raise the most capital that year.
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Azymetric
This is an IgG1-based heterodimeric antibody scaffold that consists of two different heavy chains engineered to exclusively assemble into a single molecule, allowing bi-specific binding to two different antigens or drug targets. The Azymetric™ scaffold is engineered by making amino acid changes in the CH3 region of the constant Fc domain of the IgG1. This scaffold can also be engineered with tailored effector function and optimized serum half-life. Bi-specific antibody therapeutics potentially allow drug-makers to combine two existing drugs used as a cocktail into one potent therapeutic.