Netflix ‘Pandemic’ Star Just Showed His Covid-19 Antibody Drug Works In Hamsters. How Quickly Could It Treat Humans?
John Cumbers
Ian Haydon
June 21, 2020
In his race to create life-saving antibodies, Jacob Glanville has gotten a boost from bacteria and synthetic biology.Jacob Glanville is an admirer of the human immune system — but he thinks we can do better.
On Tuesday, his company Centivax announced that they have created optimized antibodies that protect hamsters from lethal amounts of the virus that causes Covid-19. Compared to animals that did not receive the antibody, treated hamsters were found to have 97 percent less virus in their lungs after 48 hours.
This is a milestone for Centivax, which is among many companies trying to develop antibody treatments for Covid-19. Centivax’s antibodies are unique, however, in how they are made. Rather than using mammalian cells to produce a protein drug, which is common, slow, and expensive, Centivax is using cheap bacteria.
Glanville, a former Pfizer PFE scientist who received his Ph.D. in immunology from Stanford, has for years been obsessed with disrupting the immunity business. Since co-founding Distributed Bio in 2012, from which Centivax emerged, he has sought to develop better flu vaccines and cheaper antibody drugs that could block common infectious diseases.
Antibodies are proteins that the immune system creates to combat invaders. Unlike vaccines, they cannot confer long-term immunity on their own. But the right antibody dosed at the right time can shut down a virus and thereby benefit someone who is or is about to become ill. Many experts believe antibody treatments are our best bet for blunting the coronavirus pandemic while we wait for a safe and effective vaccine.
“We took antibodies that recognize SARS and re-engineered them to block the new coronavirus,” explains Glanville. “But importantly, we also made these antibodies much simpler to manufacture.”
continues at synbiobeta.com |
