# An open engineering platform for academic ADCs and bispecifics

Source: https://onco.cc/ideas/idea-fund-academic-adc-bispecific-platform/  
OnCo record `idea-fund-academic-adc-bispecific-platform` (Idea). Data CC BY-NC 4.0, attribute "Data from OnCo (onco.cc)"; commercial use needs a licence.

## TL;DR

Academic labs find new tumour targets but cannot turn an antibody into an antibody-drug conjugate or a bispecific without licensed linker and payload technology. A shared platform would provide that at no cost for first trials.

## Summary

A publicly-funded platform holding licences (or developing its own patent-free versions) for linker-payload chemistries, site-specific conjugation, bispecific formats and CAR constructs, offered royalty-free to academic teams for research and first-in-human studies, with commercial terms triggered only on licensing to a company. Paired with GMP manufacturing at translational institutes, this lets academic centres test conjugates against novel or rare-cancer antigens that no company will prioritise. The Structural Genomics Consortium's open chemical probes and the IAVI/Neutralizing Antibody Center model for HIV antibodies are precedents for open engineering infrastructure.

## Fields

- Kind: Idea
- Last checked: 2026-09-08
- Hypothesis: An open ADC and bispecific platform enables at least ten academic first-in-human trials of conjugates against novel or rare-cancer antigens within five years, compared with near zero today, and at least two are subsequently licensed.
- Rationale: Modern ADC success is largely payload and linker engineering, which is patent-encumbered and inaccessible to academics; the antigens most likely to matter for rare cancers are found in academia. Open tool infrastructure has repeatedly seeded new fields (SGC probes, Addgene plasmids).
- Proposed test: Fund the platform for three years, count academic conjugate programmes reaching GMP manufacturing and first-in-human dosing, and compare with the prior five-year baseline.
- Maturity: speculative
- Actor: engineering

## Sources

- Structural Genomics Consortium: https://www.thesgc.org/

## Connected records

- ideas: [Regional translational institutes with academic GMP suites and IND teams](https://onco.cc/ideas/idea-fund-translational-institutes-gmp/), [Shared modular GMP facilities for academic personalised vaccines and cell products](https://onco.cc/ideas/idea-fund-shared-personalised-therapy-gmp/)
- technologies: [Antibody-drug conjugate (ADC)](https://onco.cc/technologies/adc/), [Bispecific antibodies](https://onco.cc/technologies/bispecific-antibody/), [Site-specific conjugation & linker chemistry](https://onco.cc/technologies/site-specific-conjugation/), [T-cell engagers (bispecific)](https://onco.cc/technologies/t-cell-engager/)
- bottlenecks: [Secrecy and intellectual property block collaboration](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-ip-collaboration/), [The valley of death between lab and product](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-translational-valley/)

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