Since March, MTx has selected the most promising donors from hundreds of Swiss COVID-19 patients. The selection criteria identified patients who had demonstrated a clinical course of COVID-19 indicative of a particularly potent antibody response.
Blood samples were collected from the clinically selected donors and used with MTx’s microfluidic DROPZYLLA® discovery platform to identify SARS-CoV-2-neutralizing antibodies. DROPZYLLA® enables the generation of complete recombinant human antibody repertoires, preserving all specificities present in each of the patient’s B cells.
By processing more than 2 million memory B cells from the COVID-19 donors, MTx was able to identify ultra-rare antibodies with superior virus-neutralizing activity within just six weeks of first patient enrollment. The most potent of these antibodies will now undergo clinical development as a passive immunotherapy for COVID-19, with a clinical proof-of-concept anticipated for Q4 this year.
Dr. Karsten Fischer, CEO of Memo Therapeutics, said: “The identification of SARS-CoV-2-neturalizing antibodies could be a game changer in how we tackle the global COVID-19 pandemic. The discovery process and ongoing clinical development may also provide key insights into how we can combat new mutants and viral outbreaks in the future, as well as other existing viral diseases.“
Dr. Christoph Esslinger, CSO of Memo Therapeutics, commented: “We are very excited by the opportunity to contribute to the global efforts against COVID-19. We are also extremely pleased to see that our DROPZYLLA® antibody discovery platform and the established workflow appear to be perfectly suited for a rapid pandemic response, and we believe that patient-derived antibodies are the most straightforward, safe and reliable therapeutic option in such a situation.
Memo Therapeutics is an innovator in the field of antibody discovery and immune repertoire analysis.
MTx’s antibody discovery platform uses robust, simple and fast microfluidic single-cell molecular cloning and screening technologies to enable antibody repertoire mining and antibody discovery at unprecedented speed, efficiency and sensitivity.
The platform captures and preserves entire B-cell repertoires from any donor species and any B-cell type in recombinant form for display using mammalian cells. The antibody repertoires are subsequently screened in single-cell format using microfluidic screening technology that can assess millions of candidate antibodies directly in functional assays, resulting in recombinant clonal cell lines expressing mAbs with the desired functional properties.
Source: Company Press Release