03.15.19
AbCellera a biopharma firm based in Vancouver, has signed a two-year, $4.8 million contract with the Gates foundation to develop antibody therapeutics and preventative vaccines for infectious diseases, including HIV, malaria, and tuberculosis.
The funding will support a series of scientific collaborations between AbCellera and Gates Foundation working on the prevention and treatment of high-priority infectious diseases. Research projects will employ AbCellera’s capabilities in human antibody discovery and immune repertoire profiling to accelerate the development of vaccines and antibody-based treatments for use in global health.
The collaboration funded under the agreement will leverage AbCellera’s new technology capabilities for deep profiling of antibody responses. In August 2018, AbCellera acquired Lineage Biosciences, a spinout company that pioneered the use of next-generation sequencing technology (Rep-Seq) to capture the full diversity of antibodies generated by natural immune responses. Rep-Seq complements the unique functional information obtained from AbCellera’s single-cell discovery platform, increasing the diversity of antibodies identified and enabling a more rational vaccine design.
“We’re thrilled to be working with the Gates Foundation again in such a critical area of global health,” said Kevin Heyries, Ph.D., head of business development at AbCellera. “Because our platform can screen millions of single B cells per day, allowing us to identify rare and highly-potent antibodies from patient samples, the resulting fully-human antibodies can be used for the prevention of deadly diseases for which vaccine development has proven difficult. It’s a fresh approach to tackling humankind’s oldest infectious adversaries.”
The funding will support a series of scientific collaborations between AbCellera and Gates Foundation working on the prevention and treatment of high-priority infectious diseases. Research projects will employ AbCellera’s capabilities in human antibody discovery and immune repertoire profiling to accelerate the development of vaccines and antibody-based treatments for use in global health.
The collaboration funded under the agreement will leverage AbCellera’s new technology capabilities for deep profiling of antibody responses. In August 2018, AbCellera acquired Lineage Biosciences, a spinout company that pioneered the use of next-generation sequencing technology (Rep-Seq) to capture the full diversity of antibodies generated by natural immune responses. Rep-Seq complements the unique functional information obtained from AbCellera’s single-cell discovery platform, increasing the diversity of antibodies identified and enabling a more rational vaccine design.
“We’re thrilled to be working with the Gates Foundation again in such a critical area of global health,” said Kevin Heyries, Ph.D., head of business development at AbCellera. “Because our platform can screen millions of single B cells per day, allowing us to identify rare and highly-potent antibodies from patient samples, the resulting fully-human antibodies can be used for the prevention of deadly diseases for which vaccine development has proven difficult. It’s a fresh approach to tackling humankind’s oldest infectious adversaries.”