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Despite today’s biological sophistication behind antibody discovery, many bottlenecks remain. According to Paul DiGregorio, PhD, head of commercial strategy and partnerships at Telesis Bio, the barriers that slow antibody programs today lie not only in computational design or screening capacity, but in the physical act of acquiring DNA to power those screens.

“Balancing throughput versus turnaround time remains one of the major challenges,” DiGregorio explains. In conventional antibody-discovery pipelines, researchers rely heavily on third-party gene synthesis services to generate the DNA constructs needed for each iteration of the design–build–test cycle. This dependency introduces delays, variable quality, and uncertainty in delivery timelines—all of which compound to reduce productivity.

Because outsourced synthesis can take a week or more per iteration, each design cycle incurs idle time that stalls screening and analysis. “Researchers are consistently dealing with variable delivery timelines, partial order fulfillment, and variable quality,” DiGregorio says. “Each of these factors impacts execution and creates delays that limit how quickly a project can move forward.”

Another inefficiency stems from the synthesis approach employed by many service providers. Antibody sequences share extensive conserved regions across their heavy and light chains, yet service providers must resynthesize entire constructs for every variant. “In reality, researchers are often only modifying a small hypervariable CDR or complementarity-determining region,” DiGregorio notes. “Synthesizing whole chains every time wastes time and budget.”

Finally, screening itself poses intrinsic constraints. Identifying and refining a lead antibody often requires up to six iterative cycles. Any disruption in the build phase directly impacts the overall discovery timeline.

Bringing synthesis in-house

To address these bottlenecks, Telesis Bio developed Gibson SOLA, an on-demand, enzymatic DNA synthesis platform that enables researchers to synthesize DNA directly in their labs. “Instead of outsourcing synthesis, customers can design and build DNA in-house using stock reagents,” says David Weiss, director at Telesis Bio. “These universal reagents work for any sequence, so a lab can go from digital design to having the physical DNA molecule in a day.”

SOLA leverages the foundational chemistry of the Gibson assembly, invented by Telesis Bio co-founder Dan Gibson, PhD. The platform employs a modular, block-based assembly method that Weiss describes as akin to “building DNA from Lego bricks.” Because the reagents are universal, no custom oligonucleotide synthesis is required—reducing both cost and dependency on external suppliers.

What differentiates SOLA from other synthesis solutions is its intelligent synthesis capability, notes Weiss. The Gibson SOLA platform recognizes and reuses conserved DNA sequences across multiple constructs, synthesizing these shared regions only once. The platform then assembles variable regions—such as CDR loops—around these conserved backbones.

“This approach dramatically reduces redundant synthesis,” DiGregorio says. “You’re only building new DNA for the small hypervariable regions you’re testing.” The result is lower cost per construct and the ability to evaluate a broader design space. In one benchmark experiment, Telesis Bio screened 200 single-chain, variable fragments. Using SOLA, 93% of heavy and 85% of light sequences were identified as conserved. By synthesizing those regions once and reusing them, synthesis costs dropped by over 50%—while simultaneously enabling a 50% increase in the number of variants screened.

Redefining the pace of antibody discovery

SOLA integrates with standard laboratory automation systems, allowing seamless execution of high-throughput synthesis workflows. The accompanying software generates automated build instructions and supports integration with AI-driven antibody-design pipelines. “The modularity of SOLA really enables machine-learning-guided exploration,” DiGregorio says. “It gives researchers the ability to rapidly test AI-generated hypotheses in the wet lab.”

As DiGregorio summarizes, “Gibson SOLA enables scientists to focus on what really matters: exploring sequence diversity, understanding binding function, and advancing therapeutic candidates—without being constrained by the slowest step in the process.”

Learn more www.telesisbio.com/SOLA.