FluoSphera Licenses Debiopharm’s AbYlink™ Technology for 3D Antibody Characterization while Leveraging Leica Microsystems Viventis Deep Imaging Capabilities
New license agreement enables an integrated workflow combining antibody labeling, human-relevant 3D testing and quantitative imaging for antibody-based therapeutics
GENEVA & LAUSANNE, Switzerland, September 01, 2026--Debiopharm (Debiopharm Research & Manufacturing), a privately-owned, Swiss-based biopharmaceutical company aiming to establish tomorrow's standard of care to cure cancer and infectious diseases and FluoSphera, a Swiss biotechnology company developing advanced in vitro platforms to improve the prediction of drug efficacy and safety, today announced a new license agreement for use of AbYlink™, Debiopharm's proprietary antibody conjugation technology. The agreement enables FluoSphera to offer biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies an integrated workflow combining regio-selective antibody labeling, high-throughput testing in human-relevant three-dimensional models and quantitative imaging analysis.
The new offering is designed to support the characterization of antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs), bispecific antibodies, therapeutic antibodies and other antibody-based modalities. Antibody candidates can be labeled using AbYlink™ and subsequently be evaluated with FluoSphera's 3D testing platform to characterize target binding, target selectivity, tissue penetration and spatial distribution. By bringing these capabilities together in a single in vitro workflow, FluoSphera aims to help its partners generate biologically relevant data and to select the most promising antibody candidates earlier in drug development.
As antibody therapeutics become increasingly sophisticated, understanding their behavior must extend well beyond measuring affinity against isolated targets. Developers also need to evaluate target selectivity, to discriminate between target-positive and target-negative tissues and to understand how efficiently antibodies penetrate complex tumor tissues. Conventional two-dimensional assays provide limited information on these spatial and tissue-level properties. Human-relevant 3D tumor models can reveal antibody distribution and penetration patterns that may be critical when selecting lead candidates before progressing into more resource-intensive preclinical studies.
AbYlink™ is Debiopharm's proprietary antibody conjugation technology that enables selective attachment of fluorescent- or therapeutic cargos to the Fc region of IgG antibodies without requiring prior antibody modification. This regio-selective conjugation approach is designed to preserve the antibody's original affinity for its target, making it well suited for applications requiring reliable antibody labeling and downstream biological characterization.