The development and impact of Nanobodies®
HOW CAMEL BLOOD LEFTOVERS LED TO 5 VIB SPIN-OFFS Early 1990s. A scorching hot livestock market in Rabat, Morocco. A Belgian scientist named Serge Muyldermans is dealing with a local trader. Although Serge is clearly not in his natural habitat, he looks excited. The camel he just bought for 40,000 Belgian francs – now around 1,000 euros – could be the start of a promising new research avenue for him and the late VUB professor Raymond Hamers. Little do they know that they’re about to write one of the most successful international biotech stories ever. Fast forward to 2021. More than three decades of research on camel and llama blood has resulted in multiple waves of impact. Over the years, five VIB spin-offs have been founded, dozens of potential medicines have been developed, and the biggest biotech acquisition in Belgian history took place in 2018, when French pharma player Sanofi acquired Ablynx for 3.9 billion euros. And the research is anything but finished. Since 1996, the VIB-VUB Center for Structural Biology, led by professor Jan Steyaert, has served as a hotbed for progress in this promising domain. And as we speak, new innovations in the fields of medicine, animal medicine and crop protection are being developed. All of them go back to a seemingly ordinary day in 1989.
On the origin of impact
Serendipity meets curiosity Another day at university in 1989. VUB biology students are everything but looking forward to their immunochemistry lab, where they have to detect and sort antibodies – substances that attack invading diseases – from animals such as mice, dogs, rabbits and birds. It’s an experiment with predictable outcomes: all antibodies are more or less similar. That is until professor Raymond Hamers suggests also testing dromedary blood because he happens to have some leftover blood samples in the freezer from an earlier research project on sleeping sickness.
