Dr. John McCafferty

John McCafferty was one of the founders of Cambridge Antibody Technology (CAT, now Medimmune, Cambridge) in 1990 and published the first paper/patent describing antibody phage display which led to the award of the 2018 Nobel Prize in Chemistry to Greg Winter. This technology has proved to be robust and has gone on to widespread use in commercial and academic groups world-wide. An antibody generated by CAT using this technology has now become the world’s biggest selling drug (Humira) and another 10 phage derived antibodies have been approved.

After 12 years at CAT he returned to academia at the Sanger Institute and the University of Cambridge. In 2012 John formed IONTAS, an innovative biotechnology company using phage display to develop novel antibody therapeutics.

In this period John has developed a novel technology allowing the construction of very large mammalian display libraries permitting the direct discovery of high affinity antibodies with optimal biophysical properties. He has led the development of a novel molecular fusion format wherein naturally occurring, venom-derived cysteine-rich peptides (knottins) are inserted into peripheral CDR loops of an antibody. The resultant bi-specific fusion molecule (KnotBody) retains the folding and function of both knottin and antibody and combines the benefits of each.