i-shaped antibody engineering enables conformational tuning of biotherapeutic receptor agonists

The ability to leverage antibodies to agonize disease relevant biological pathways has tremendous potential for clinical investigation. Yet while antibodies have been successful as antagonists, immune mediators, and targeting agents, they are not readily effective at recapitulating the biology of natural ligands. Among the important determinants of antibody agonist activity is the geometry of target receptor engagement. Here, we describe an engineering approach inspired by a naturally occurring Fab-Fab homotypic interaction that constrains IgG in a unique i-shaped conformation. i-shaped antibody (iAb) engineering enables potent intrinsic agonism of five tumor necrosis factor receptor superfamily (TNFRSF) targets. When applied to bispecific antibodies against the heterodimeric IL-2 receptor pair, constrained bispecific IgG formats recapitulate IL-2 agonist activity. iAb engineering provides a tool to tune agonist antibody function and this work provides a framework for the development of intrinsic antibody agonists with the potential for generalization across broad receptor classes.