From antibody discovery to development: long-read sequencing in practice
As sequencing continues to grow in importance across biotherapeutic discovery and development, where can it make the biggest impact and how can fragmented workflows be overcome?
Sequencing informs decisions at almost every stage of biotherapeutic development. Yet many teams still rely on outsourced services and several separate technologies to get their answers, which adds delays, complexity and cost.
Working with Oxford Nanopore, Pfizer’s BioMedicine Design team set out to change that. In this webinar, Jonathan McDaniel, Ilya Tikh and Hamza Sahil explain how they are implementing Oxford Nanopore long-read sequencing as a unified, in-house platform across the pipeline. They draw on real examples from three stages:
- Discovery: screening antibody candidates earlier, with full-length sequences and VH-VL pairing preserved
- Construct verification: checking plasmid constructs end to end
- Cell line development: confirming the identity and purity of stable CHO cell lines
The team will also cover what it takes to make the platform scale:
- Standardised analysis
- Automated sample preparation
- Multiplexing
- Deployment across multiple sites
After the presentation, the speakers are joined by Lijian Yu for a live Q&A. You can bring questions about your own sequencing workflows.
Our speakers
Mia Rapoza Peterson | BioPharma Sales Executive at Oxford Nanopore technologies | Moderator
Mia Rapoza Peterson has been a member of the Strategic Biopharma team at Oxford Nanopore for two years, supporting biopharma customers across the Boston and New England region.
Hamza Sahil | Senior Scientist at Pfizer
Hamza Sahil leads the DNA production and next-generation sequencing (NGS) efforts at Pfizer Cambridge in the Biotherapeutic Expression and Purification group, where he supports projects from early discovery through to cell line process development. Before joining Pfizer, Hamza worked at a microbiome start-up, using Oxford Nanopore Technologies (ONT) for 16S sequencing. Before that, he spent several years at a contract research organisation (CRO), primarily focusing on DNA production and Sanger sequencing.
Jonathan McDaniel | Senior Principal Scientist at Pfizer
Jonathan McDaniel is a Senior Principal Scientist in Biomedicine Design at Pfizer, where he leads the development and application of next-generation sequencing and high-throughput discovery technologies for biologics research. His work combines molecular biology, automation, computational analysis and antibody engineering to enable large-scale interrogation of immune repertoires and accelerate therapeutic candidate discovery. He has contributed to the implementation of nanopore sequencing workflows for antibody discovery and is focused on building integrated platforms that translate complex sequencing datasets into actionable insights for drug development.
Ilya Tikh | Senior Principal Scientist at Pfizer
Dr Ilya Tikh is a Senior Principal Scientist in the Biomedicine Design group at Pfizer, where he leads efforts in synthetic biology and cell line development to enable the production of next-generation biologics. He is passionate about developing novel platforms that accelerate biologics development workflows. As part of its cell line development and characterisation activities, the Biomedicine Design group has built extensive experience applying next-generation sequencing technologies, including nanopore sequencing, to address complex biological challenges. This includes the validation and characterisation of stable CHO cell lines.
Lijian Yu | Senior Principal Scientist at Pfizer (Q&A only)
Dr Lijian Yu is a Senior Principal Scientist at Pfizer, where he uses advanced DNA sequencing and bioinformatics tools to support the discovery and development of new medicines. His work supports the design of next-generation biologic therapies, including multispecific antibodies that target disease in novel ways. He is passionate about translating genomics technologies into practical tools that advance medical innovation.
Who should attend
This session is for scientists and lab leads in antibody discovery, molecular biology and cell line development. It will be particularly useful if you are running a sequencing project now, or deciding whether to keep sequencing outsourced or bring it in-house.
What you’ll learn
- How Pfizer uses long-read sequencing to analyse full-length antibody sequences, preserve VH-VL pairing and capture sequence diversity for early candidate screening
- How nanopore sequencing supports end-to-end plasmid verification, vector integrity assessment and construct validation
- How the team characterises stable cell lines, confirms clonal identity and identifies potential cross-well contamination
- The bioinformatics, consensus generation and quality-control approaches that make long-read analysis accurate and scalable
- How automation, multiplexing and standardised workflows let one platform serve different applications and sites
- What bringing sequencing in-house means for turnaround times, flexibility and cost, compared with fragmented, outsourced workflows