The Antibody Society

the official website of the antibody society

An international non-profit supporting antibody-related research and development.

Prof. Victor Greiff’s webinar is now available On Demand!

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In case you missed Prof. Victor Greiff’s very popular webcast on best practices relating to the conception, analysis and performance of adaptive immune receptor repertoire studies, the On Demand version is now online!

High-throughput sequencing has enabled the capture of adaptive immune receptor repertoire (AIRR) data at unprecedented depth and precision. This webinar gives an in-depth walk-through of best practices to conceive, analyze and perform AIRR studies for answering fundamental immunological questions as well as discovering novel immunodiagnostic biomarkers and design (therapeutic) immune receptors. Specifically, Dr. Greiff addresses current approaches to perform AIRR-compliant AIRR data processing encompassing bulk and single-cell approaches and experimental and bioinformatics quality control. Furthermore, he summarizes the computational methods that have been recently developed to deconstruct the high-dimensional complexity of immune receptor repertoires, e.g., 1) diversity-, 2) phylogenetic-, 3) networks- and 4) machine learning-based methods that have been applied to dissect and understand the diversity, architecture, evolution and antigen specificity of immune repertoires. Finally, Dr. Greiff discusses experimental and computational methods in light of their underlying assumptions, limitations and pitfalls and highlight promising avenues of future research in basic and applied AIRR systems immunology.

Click here to access the On Demand webinar!

The AIRR Community has started a Webinar Series

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The AIRR Community is pleased to announce that it has started a Webinar Series. Webinars will include current AIRR-related topics as well as tutorials. The inaugural Webinar is on “Steps in data processing and analysis of adaptive immune receptor repertoires: best practices, pitfalls, and future directions” by Prof. Victor Greiff, University of Oslo (Norway), April 6, 2021. The Seminar is free, available on-demand and on the AIRR YouTube channel.

 

Preventing severe disease in Covid-19 patients

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Written by Raquel Barroso Ferro, University of Aberdeen

In April 2020, Vir Biotechnology and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) began a partnership that has proven fruitful. As announced on March 10, 2021, patients with mild or moderate Covid-19 at high risk of progression to severe disease who were treated with the human monoclonal antibody VIR-7831 (sotrovimab) in the COMET-ICE study (NCT04545060) had a reduction of 85% in hospitalization or death compared to those who received placebo. Although complete details of the ongoing trial are not yet available, this “artificial immunity” offers hope for patients. In particular, such treatment may be beneficial to those who are unable to receive a vaccine or whose immune system is weakened.

Vir and GSK plan to submit an emergency use authorization application in the US and seek authorizations in other countries.

Originally derived from a patient who survived severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV) in 2003, (1) the antibody binds to a highly conserved epitope on the spike glycoprotein shared by both SARS-CoV and the virus causing the current pandemic, SARS-CoV-2. This shared epitope suggests high conservation and its likely importance for viral infection. Binding this epitope may reduce the likelihood of mutational escape, and allow the antibody to neutralize multiple variants that emerge. In fact, according to a pre-print posted March 10, 2021 on BioRxiv, the epitope of VIR-7831 does not overlap with the mutational sites observed in the circulating variants. (1)

In preclinical studies, VIR-7831 achieved high concentration in the lungs, (1) the principal site of Covid-19 infection, (2) neutralized live virus, and was shown to engage effector functions, such as antibody-dependent cytotoxicity and phagocytosis, to mediate clearance of infected cells. (1)

The announcement of positive results from the COMET-ICE study follows a March 3, 2021, announcement by Vir and GSK that the Data and Safety Monitoring Board for the ACTIV-3 trial (NCT04501978) evaluating VIR-7831 in hospitalized adults with COVID-19 has recommended that the VIR-7831 arm of the trial be closed to enrolment while the data mature. No safety signals were reported, but the sensitivity analysis called into question the magnitude of the potential benefit of VIR-7831 administration to hospitalized patients. The National Institutes of Health is sponsoring the ACTIV-3 master protocol, which is examining the clinical safety and efficacy of numerous investigational agents relative to current standard of care therapy in hospitalized patients with more severe COVID-19.

Overall, the findings from the two clinical studies suggest that VIR-7831 could be of most benefit to patients during early onset of the disease, shortly after a positive test. This treatment has great potential to reduce both the severity of the disease in individuals and the substantial burden COVID-19 has placed on hospital staff and resources.

Another challenge, however, will be instilling confidence in doctors to prescribe anti-SARS-CoV-2 monoclonal therapies to patients. According to Dr. Derek Angus, an intensive-care physician at the University of Pittsburgh who spoke to Nature, (3) the absence of data published in peer-reviewed journals has left doctors wary. Moreover, high costs and more specialized requirements for administering infusion-based therapies will make what seems to be a working therapy and hope for patients a more complicated task. Intramuscular (IM) injection, which may substantially increase patient convenience, is possible. Clinical studies for anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibodies administered via intramuscular (IM) injection, including VIR-7831 (COMET-PEAK) and AZD7442 (PROVENT, STORM CHASER), are ongoing and clinical study results have not yet been announced.

1.       Cathcart et al. The dual function monoclonal antibodies VIR-7831 and VIR-7832 demonstrate potent in vitro and in vivo activity against SARS-CoV-2. 2021. 
2.       Cevik et al. Virology, transmission, and pathogenesis of SARS-CoV-2. BMJ 2020; 371. BMJ. 2020. 
3.       Ledford H. COVID antibody treatments show promise for preventing severe disease. Nature 2021. 

The AIRR-C Diagnostics Working Group published on the future of blood testing using AIRR technology

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The AIRR-C Diagnostics Working Group recently published a manuscript on using the immunome for blood testing in Frontiers in Immunology. In the manuscript, the AIRR-C discusses opportunities as well as the current state of immunome-based diagnostics and highlights some of the challenges involved. The authors conclude with a call to clinicians, researchers, and others to join efforts AIRR-C to realize the diagnostic potential of the immunome. In the paper, the researchers define immunome as “millions of V(D)J-rearranged antibody and T cell receptor genes collectively expressed by a person’s B cells (antibodies) and T cells”.

The Future of Blood Testing Is the Immunome. (Frontiers in Immunology, 2021).

Arnaout RA, Prak ETL, Schwab N, Rubelt F. Adaptive Immune Receptor Repertoire Community.

Antibody Engineering & Therapeutics Europe Poster Competition

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Attention Student and Post-doc Members!

The Antibody Engineering & Therapeutics Europe Poster Competition is now open.

This virtual meeting will be held June 8-10, 2021.

To recognize the research activities of promising student and postdoctoral members, The Antibody Society is sponsoring a poster competition for these members in which two winners will be selected to receive:

  • Free registration to attend this virtual conference;
  • An opportunity to present a virtual poster during the conference; 
  • A Digital Badge as a Winner of the Poster Competition; and
  • The Antibody Society’s Award of Excellence (shown above).

In order to be considered for this poster competition, you must be a student or postdoctoral fellow member of The Antibody Society and your poster abstract must be submitted using the poster submission form. Please be sure to check the box on the poster submission form indicating that you want your abstract to be considered for the poster competition.

The Poster submission deadline is April 30, 2021.
Winners will be notified by May 7, 2021.

Submit your poster here!

Poster abstracts may be submitted and accepted for presentation at the conference after April 30th, but any submissions received after April 30 will not be considered for the poster competition.

Not a member? Please join!