Therapeutic antibodies company AbCellera reported on Wednesday the launch of a partnership with the Vaccine Research Center at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, and Ichor Medical Systems.
As part of its Pandemic Prevention Platform (P3) team, AbCellera assembled the consortium in response to a high-priority initiative from the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to enable rapid response to pandemic viral outbreaks.
Under the terms of the four-year, USD30m project, NIAID Vaccine Research Center and Ichor will contribute expertise in virology, vaccinology, nucleic acid antibody vectorization and delivery to complement AbCellera's capabilities.
The partnership will build an end-to-end platform capable of developing field-ready medical countermeasures within 60 days of a viral outbreak.
In 2018, AbCellera performed rapid antibody discovery from camelids infected with Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (MERS-CoV), which has high pandemic potential. The first 355 unique sequences, including many antibodies that are potent virus neutralizers, were obtained in just three days and 19 hours. Camels act as a natural reservoir of MERS-CoV and exhibit mild symptoms when infected. However, when the virus spreads to humans, it causes severe respiratory illness.
Now, one year into this four-year project, AbCellera, the NIAID Vaccine Research Center and Ichor will be testing how quickly they can move from discovering broadly-neutralizing antibodies against influenza virus to delivering a nucleic acid-based countermeasure that can protect against infection.
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