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You are here: Home / Archives for Coronavirus

AIRR Community and Tsinghua University discuss Chinese research using AIRR-seq data to study adaptive immune response in COVID-19 patients

May 13, 2021 by Pam Borghardt

A meeting focusing on Chinese researchers’ use of AIRR-seq data to study the adaptive immune response – especially in COVID-19 patients – was held recently by the AIRR Community and Tsinghua University.

The purpose of this co-organized meeting was to expose AIRR-seq researchers in China to the philosophy and tools developed by the AIRR Community and help integrate researchers from all over the world through the AIRR Community.

Although collaboration and sharing data internationally is complicated and difficult, this successful meeting was an important step in forming the relationships necessary for overcoming many of these challenges.

Tsinghua University is a major research university in Beijing and a member of the C9 League of Chinese universities. Since its establishment exactly 110 years ago, it has produced many notable leaders in science, engineering, politics, business, academia, and culture. The university is ranked as the 15th best university in the world in the QS World University Rankings and No.1 in Asia by the Asia University Rankings and the U.S. News and World Report.

The meeting followed a hybrid format, combining online lectures by AIRR Community members in the US and Europe in conjunction with an in-person meeting in Shenzhen, China that was organized by Professor Xiao Liu of Tsinghua University’s Shenzhen campus.

The in-person, all-day meeting was held on December 6, 2020 in Shenzhen, which corresponded to Saturday evening December 5 in North America.

The full meeting agenda can be found on the meeting web page and the meeting recording has been posted on the AIRR-C YouTube Channel.

 

Filed Under: AIRR Community, Coronavirus, COVID-19, Uncategorized Tagged With: Adaptive Immune Receptor Repertoire Community, COVID-19, Meetings, SARS-CoV-2

Fighting the Forever-war Against Infectious Diseases

September 16, 2020 by The Antibody Society

Author: Nick Hutchinson, Mammalian Cell Culture, Business Steering Group Lead, FUJIFILM Diosynth Biotechnologies (nick.hutchinson@fujifilm.com)

The COVID-19 crisis has had a devastating impact on populations across the world and caused the death of hundreds of thousands of people. The Antibody Society spoke to Dr. Jacob Glanville, CEO and President of Distributed Bio, Inc. to learn how his company has approached the development of new antibody therapeutics against the SARS-CoV-2 Coronavirus. He described how the crisis has stimulated innovation that may revolutionize the way we approach antibody discovery and development once the current pandemic is under control.

Dr Glanville explained, “The problem, when we think of every major outbreak, such as Ebola, SARS, MERS, Swine Flu, Avian Flu, is that the time it takes to develop a new drug is too long compared to the speed with which we need it. De novo discovery is too slow.”

To develop antibody therapeutics against COVID-19 as quickly as possible, Distributed Bio identified anti-SARS antibodies from almost 20 years ago that researchers had already shown would neutralize the SARS virus in vitro, protect mice from lethal challenge, and had known crystal structures. These antibodies have been studied extensively but were eventually too late to have an impact on the SARS crisis of 2003. It was Glanville’s idea to take advantage of the detailed functional research already performed on these antibodies and, try to retrofit them to bind to the new version of their original target the virus SARS-CoV-2. For this purpose, Distributed Bio applied their Tumbler technology, a computationally-guided antibody optimization method, capable of producing a library of billions of variants of individual antibodies exploring variations of all six complementarity-determining regions simultaneously.

“The novel coronavirus has around 74% homology in identity with the SARS receptor binding domain. I knew exactly how similar they were to the novel coronavirus as we had crystal structures of the SARS epitope. I believed that if we took five anti-SARS antibodies, there was going to be a pretty good chance that we would be able to adapt them to be a potent medicine against COVID-19,” said Glanville. “We already knew that they had the correct function, that they bound the right epitope in the right orientation with the right elbow angles. I believed that we could optimize them and enhance their affinity by making billions of versions of the antibodies within the library,” he continued.

According to Glanville, this is crucially important because historically, with outbreaks such as Ebola, the first antibodies launched were essentially prototypes with low potency or had inferior characteristics such as poor thermostability. It was the best-in-class not the first antibody that was successful, ultimately.

Distributed Bio were able to adapt all five antibodies in just nine weeks, a testament to the remarkable speed of these novel technologies. They sent a set of the most promising candidates to five laboratories which independently confirmed their ability to bind to the new SARS-CoV-2. The company then selected the two most potent antibodies for in-vivo testing, and two laboratories confirmed independently that both candidates protected healthy, as well as immuno-compromised animals using hamster models.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Antibody discovery, Antibody therapeutic, Coronavirus, COVID-19 Tagged With: antibody therapeutics, SARS-CoV-2

AIRR-C Special Event – Response to COVID-19: Videos are Live

September 15, 2020 by jpburckert

The AIRR Community held a successful virtual event showcasing how AIRR-sequencing data can be leveraged to inform the Biology of COVID-19.

The AIRR Community held a successful event showcasing how AIRR-sequencing data can be leveraged to inform the Biology of COVID-19. 3 days, 8 speakers, 5 moderated panel discussions, and 355 attendees from 25 countries made for a meaningful discussion.

Check out the AIRR Youtube Channel for the recorded talks.

 

Filed Under: AIRR Community, Coronavirus, COVID-19, Meetings Tagged With: Adaptive Immune Receptor Repertoire Community

AIRR Community 3 Day Special Event – Response to COVID-19 Talks Start Today!

September 8, 2020 by Bojan

The 3 day AIRR Community Special Event – Response to COVID-19 starts today. Join the Community and learn more about Leveraging AIRR-sequencing Data to Inform the Biology of COVID-19. Contact meetings@AIRRC.antibodysociety.org to register. Visit the event page for the complete program.

Follow the event on Twitter #airrcovid.

Filed Under: AIRR Community, Coronavirus, COVID-19 Tagged With: Adaptive Immune Receptor Repertoire Community

Antibodies to Watch in a Pandemic

August 26, 2020 by The Antibody Society

The extraordinary scale of the COVID-19 pandemic has elicited extraordinary responses world-wide, but the resulting disruptions have raised concerns about delays in approval of non-COVID-19 antibody therapeutics.

As part of the virtual Antibody Engineering & Therapeutics Europe conference, Dr. Janice Reichert, Executive Director of The Antibody Society,  provided an update on non-COVID-19 antibody therapeutics approved so far in 2020, and those that might be approved by the end of the year. She also discussed the biologics currently in development for COVID-19, which includes over 50 repurposed biologics and over 80 anti-SARS-CoV-2 biologics.

Broadcast date: Thursday August 27, 2020.

Updated presentation slides can be downloaded here.

Dataset of commercially sponsored biologic COVID-19 interventions can be downloaded here.

Filed Under: Approvals, Coronavirus, COVID-19, European Medicines Agency, Food and Drug Administration Tagged With: antibody therapeutics, approved antibodies, COVID-19, European Medicines Agency, Food and Drug Administration

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