Infinimune CEO Dr Wyatt McDonnell on Leveraging the Human Immune System for Therapeutic Antibody Discovery

Wyatt McDonnell, PhD, CEO and co-founder of Infinimmune, a California-based preclinical antibody biotechnology company, sat down with BioPharm International® at the 2026 BIO International Convention (BIO 2026), occurring June 23–25 in San Diego, to discuss the company's biologic-producing platform (Anthrobody), its Glimpse large language model (LLM), and a collaboration with Merck.

Dr McDonnell frames the core advantage of Infinimune's approach around multi-objective optimization. Conventional laboratory campaigns sequentially optimize therapeutic antibody properties, such as selectivity, half-life, manufacturability, and safety. The human immune system, he argues, performs this optimization in parallel across an estimated 100 billion antibody preclinical trials daily. The company’s Anthrobody platform is designed to access that biological process directly, he emphasizes.

How does Infinimune's LLM differ from general-purpose artificial intelligence in antibody optimization?

Central to the company’s platform is Glimpse, an antibody-first LLM trained specifically on heavy chain and light chain contact data and how those contacts encode antigen specificity, Dr McDonnell explains. He notes that, unlike general-purpose LLMs, Glimpse evaluates antibody sequences by measuring unexpectedness, or pseudo-perplexity, from an antibody-centric perspective. This approach enables the model to preserve the humanness of an antibody while maintaining therapeutic properties, including high-concentration manufacturability and extended in vivo half-life, he says.

"What we're doing is we’re using Glimpse to maintain the humanness of that antibody while not sacrificing the therapeutic properties that we need," Dr McDonnell states.

Dr McDonnell next describes Infinimune's March 2026 collaboration with Merck¹ as evidence that large pharmaceutical companies cannot readily replicate human-derived antibody libraries using established platforms, such as transgenic mice, animal immunization methods, or synthetic display libraries. He explains that Merck will explore multiple targets with Infinimune over several years, focusing on antibody responses that conventional methods have not been able to access.

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About the speaker

Wyatt McDonnell, PhD, CEO and Co-Founder, Infinimnune

Dr McDonnell also serves as chairman of Infinimmune, a biotechnology company pioneering antibody discovery and design by leveraging natural human immunity to develop safer and more effective therapeutics for complex diseases. Under his leadership, Infinimmune has established strategic collaborations with Merck, Immunome, and GRID Therapeutics to advance the discovery and development of novel antibody therapeutics. Previously, Dr McDonnell helped develop 10x Genomics’ first therapeutic antibodies and core immunology intellectual property behind three commercial products. He has co-authored 31 peer-reviewed publications, including in Nature, Cell, and Nature Medicine, and is an inventor on 19 published patents. Dr McDonnell earned a PhD and Master of Science from Vanderbilt University School of Medicine.

Reference

1. Infinimmune. Infinimmune enters collaboration with Merck to discover novel human antibody therapeutics. Business Wire. Published March 31, 2026. Accessed June 23, 2026. https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260331613246/en/Infinimmune-Enters-Collaboration-with-Merck-to-Discover-Novel-Human-Antibody-Therapeutics