PBL’s core focus is right in line with the Society’s: supporting the research and understanding of interferons and cytokines, with the goal of improving human health. The company—founded in 1990—has been participating in Cytokines meetings for 30 years and has sponsored the ICIS-Sidney & Joan Pestka Graduate & Post-Graduate Awards for the past 14 years. We’ve always prided ourselves on the quality of our offerings, whether manufacturing and providing a single immunoassay kit to an academic lab or performing biomarker sample testing in support of a Phase 3 study for large pharma. While we’re not a “one-stop shop” for all your needs, the benefit of sourcing Products and Services from PBL is that those who work with us receive an enormous amount of value for the dollar—the benefit of all the years of our expertise. Our proteins and antibodies have been used by thousands of researchers and have been the market standard for over 30 years, and our higher-sensitivity immunoassay kits are designed to ensure they validate quickly with real-world disease samples, including autoimmune patient sera and plasma. Our scientists have decades of experience developing and running immunoassays, and researchers can leverage our expertise to develop biomarker assays and provide assay performance qualification and sample testing services on high-sensitivity and multiplex platforms. As I like to say, PBL is the small company that can help address your biggest challenges!
- Please tell us your name, affiliation and title. Robert Pestka, CEO, PBL Assay Science.
- Your company has been sponsoring the ICIS-Sidney & Joan Pestka Graduate & Post-Graduate Awards for the past 14 years. What motivated you to start these awards and has kept your company committed to them all this time? My first Cytokines meeting was in Tokyo in 1993. Over the years, I realized that there were awards for senior researchers, but none that recognized the significant accomplishments of investigators in the earlier parts of their careers. I felt it was important to fill that gap, so we worked with the Society to target grad students and post-doctoral fellows, who I was sure could benefit from the recognition (and the nice cash prize!) that accompanied the Awards.
- What were the first thoughts about setting up a company devoted to selling cytokines? My father, Sidney Pestka, had developed a number of interferon and cytokine proteins, antibodies, and assays over the course of his pharma and academic careers. He’d receive frequent requests to share his reagents. At the same time, his employer (Robert Wood Johnson Medical School) was encouraging professors to start up small businesses that could result in licensing and royalty income back to the school. Those two factors combined to serve as impetus to start PBL in 1990.
- Your parents started the company, and you became an integral part of the business side of cytokine research. Will any family members be following in your footsteps?For the first few years of PBL’s existence, my father provided the reagents and my mother Joan Pestka did everything else, from sales and shipping to accounting and tech support. I joined the company as the first full-time employee in 1993, and we’ve grown significantly since that time. Both my sons have worked summer jobs at PBL, so they have a taste of what the opportunities at PBL are, but I’m not sure just yet if they (or their 7 first cousins!) are ready to commit!
- What were the problems/issues you faced in setting up a cytokine company? PBL has always prided itself on the quality of our offerings, whether we’re manufacturing and providing a single immunoassay kit to an academic lab or performing biomarker sample testing in support of a Phase 3 study for a large pharmaceutical company. The challenge for PBL is that we’re not a “one-stop shop” for all your needs. The benefit of sourcing your Products and Services from PBL, however, is that researchers who work with us receive an enormous amount of value for the dollar—the benefit of all the years of our expertise. Our proteins and antibodies have been used by thousands of researchers and have been the market standard for over 30 years, and our higher-sensitivity immunoassay kits are designed to ensure they validate quickly with real-world disease samples including autoimmune patient sera and plasma. Our scientists have decades of experience developing and running immunoassays, and researchers can leverage our expertise to develop biomarker assays and provide assay performance qualification and sample testing services on several high-sensitivity and multiplex platforms. As I like to say, PBL is the small company that can help address your biggest challenges!
- Do you see the market for cytokines expanding? Interest in interferons and cytokines is not going away. Inflammatory and anti-inflammatory cytokines are crucial indicators of disease progression and therapeutic efficacy in a wide range of clinical indications in oncology, neurodegeneration, metabolic dysregulation, cardiovascular disease, a spectrum of immune conditions, and beyond. Careful quantification of the induction and suppression of cytokine expression profiles will be important in an expanding set of therapeutic and research programs. PBL is well positioned to help our customers and collaborators assess these cytokines and other unique biomarkers.
- Are there future or current technologies that have impacted your sales or will open up new markets? There continue to be new opportunities for PBL to assist researchers and therapeutic study leads with their biomarker assay development, optimization, qualification, and sample testing needs. Studies we’ve conducted to characterize panels of neurodegeneration analytes have led to additional clinical trial work. Our focus on quantifying difficult-to-measure large molecule analytes on Quanterix SIMOATM, SMCxPROTM, and MSD V- and S-PlexTMplatforms—including custom-developed homebrew assays—has led to CAR-T, complement factor, and microbiome-related projects.
- Have you formed any relationships with big pharma, given that interferons and cytokines are involved in such a wide range of health conditions? PBL has worked with scientists at large pharma companies as far back as I can recall. Our immunoassay kits have been validated for pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic studies. We’ve developed and qualified assays for our clients. Pharmas and biotechs have transferred their in-house assays to PBL, to execute long-term clinical sample testing. We’ve performed exploratory biomarker analysis on single- and multiplex platforms, from a single sample to thousands of samples. In short, our pharma partners feel that they benefit tremendously from the depth of scientific knowledge and project design expertise that PBL brings to the table.
- Are there any particular friendships or collaborations that came specifically out of Cytokines meetings?I’ve made many friends in my years attending Cytokines meetings. Some of those relationships have led to PBL licensing research reagents that we manufacture and sell today. As a small company, we’re able to pay generous royalties, so we encourage researchers with unique cytokine reagents to contact us! Some of those relationships have also led to successful collaborations, such as our work with long-time ICIS members Paul Herzog and Ray Donnelly, along with Deanna Santer and others, on the characterization of antibodies to measure cell-surface levels of human interferon lambda receptor 1 (J Interferon Cytokine Res. 2023 Sep; 43(9):403-413). This work will result in PBL’s launch of human IFN-λR1 HLR14 antibody later this month.
- What Cytokines meeting(s) have been your favorites?I’ve attended many meetings over the years and love the opportunities they’ve given me to see destinations I might not have visited otherwise. But I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that I met my wife in Budapest when I travelled to that beautiful city in advance of the 1994 conference! I’m certainly looking forward to participating in Cytokines 2024 in Seoul, when we’ll be a meeting sponsor along with our regional partner Dong-In Biotech.
- Do you have any new thoughts about how your company might interact with the members of the ICIS? PBL is a long-time supporter of the ICIS. Some members may already know and trust PBL products. It’s likely that most members don’t know the breadth of biomarker assay development and sample testing services we provide as well. I’d love to learn more about ICIS members and their project needs, and to share who we are and how we might help them in their work.