{"id":36233,"date":"2019-03-14T16:16:10","date_gmt":"2019-03-14T20:16:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sciencebusiness.technewslit.com\/?p=36233"},"modified":"2019-03-15T12:01:07","modified_gmt":"2019-03-15T16:01:07","slug":"gates-supporting-infectious-antibody-discovery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/technewslit.com\/sciencebusiness\/?p=36233","title":{"rendered":"Gates Supporting Infectious Antibody Discovery"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Human B-cell (NIAID, Flickr)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

14 Mar. 2019. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is enlisting a company that discovers therapeutic antibodies to help researchers develop new drugs and vaccines for serious infectious diseases. The company, AbCellera Biologics Inc.<\/a> in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, is receiving $4.8 million to collaborate with the foundation’s funded researchers studying treatments and vaccines against HIV, malaria, and tuberculosis.<\/p>\n

AbCellera uses what it calls deep mining of B-cells from the immune system to discover antibodies for preventing and treating diseases caused by a range of viruses and bacteria. B-cells<\/a> are white blood cells in the immune system that produce antibodies, proteins that attack invading pathogens, such as bacteria and parasites. Unlike T-cells that respond to infections, B-cells respond directly to the invaders and, like some T-cells, retain that immune response over time, an essential property of many vaccines.<\/p>\n

The company’s antibody discovery process<\/a> combines a number of technologies, beginning with single-cell screening with microfluidics, or lab-on-a-chip devices. AbCellera also uses advanced bioinformatics for further analysis and high-throughput characterization to express hundreds of antibodies.<\/p>\n

With the company’s acquisition of Lineage Biosciences<\/a> in August 2018, AbCellera also gained the ability to sequence genes found in B-cells that code for antibodies. This repertoire sequencing, or Rep-Seq, capability, says the company, makes it possible to conduct a deeper analysis of antibodies that produce immune responses to infections, autoimmune diseases and, cancer, as well as take place in immunizations or vaccinations.<\/p>\n

Under the new 2-year agreement with the Gates Foundation<\/a>, AbCellera plans to help Gates-funded researchers more deeply examine and discover new antibodies, and provide more data for profiling immune responses. “Because our platform can screen millions of single B-cells per day,” says Kevin Heyries<\/a>, who heads AbCellera’s business development in a company statement<\/a>, “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\u2019s a fresh approach to tackling humankind\u2019s oldest infectious adversaries.”<\/p>\n

This is the second collaboration for AbCellera with the Gates Foundation. In 2017, the company received an award<\/a> to discover highly targeted synthetic antibodies<\/a> against tuberculosis. Those antibodies would then be used to develop fast, inexpensive point-of-care tests for tuberculosis infections.<\/p>\n

AbCellera works through partnerships<\/a> and under contract to other companies and organizations, rather than develop a pipeline of its own. Its partnerships include many major pharmaceutical and biotechnology enterprises, as well as the Gates Foundation.<\/p>\n

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