Canadian drugmaker AbCellera has partnered with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The two year agreement will see the organisations work together on the prevention and treatment high-priority infectious diseases.
There has been $4.8m of funding allocated to the partnership, which will support a series of scientific collaborations between AbCellera and Gates Foundation funded scientists.
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AbCellera will contribute through its human antibody discovery and immune repertoire profiling capabilities, with the aim of developing vaccines and antibody-based therapies.
This will be carried out using the groundbreaking gene sequencing technology Rep-Seq, which AbCellera acquired last year through Lineage Biosciences. Rep-Seq is able to capture all types of antibodies produced by natural immune responses.
The use of Rep-Seq in combination with AbCellera’s single-cell discovery platform is expected to improve the range of antibodies identified and allow more rational vaccine design.
The target diseases include HIV, malaria and tuberculosis.
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By GlobalDataAbCellera CEO Carl Hansen said: “We believe AbCellera’s human antibody discovery capabilities will have a catalytic role in the development of diagnostics, vaccines, and antibody therapies for improved global health.”
Previously, the company and the Gates Foundation partnered on the identification of high-affinity monoclonal antibodies against ten biomarkers linked to Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) infection.
AbCellera business development head Kevin Heyries said: “We’re thrilled to be working with the Gates Foundation again in such a critical area of global health.
“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.”
Last month, the company also entered a multi-year, multi-target agreement with Novartis.
As part of the deal, Novartis will use AbCellera antibody discovery technology for up to ten clinically-relevant disease targets.
The platform leverages genomic sequences, artificial intelligence and data visualisation techniques to identify the antibody molecules that would make the best drug candidates.
