A partnership between antibody development experts and global healthcare providers creates a new COVID-19 treatment for immunocompromised, high-risk, and vaccine refractory individuals, effective against major variants including Omicron
ProteoGenix (market-leading antibody provider), Aseem Healthcare (global healthcare company), and Trident Biopharm Solutions (life science consultancy agency) have announced the development of a new antibody cocktail effective against major variants of SARS-CoV-2. The cocktail of four fully human neutralizing antibodies (AH-5-COV) was generated by screening the plasma of a COVID-19 survivor using ProteoGenix’s phage display platform. The new treatment is undergoing preclinical evaluation and will be ready to start clinical trials in 2 months.
“Our experience in developing immunotherapies for a wide spectrum of diseases and our contribution to the engineering of three treatments on the market, allowed us to quickly generate a broadly neutralising antibody cocktail,” said Philippe Funfrock, CEO and co-founder of ProteoGenix. “This treatment’s ability to neutralize several variants of the virus also highlights the potential of phage display technologies to create efficient therapeutics against infectious diseases.”
The broadly neutralising antibodies were sourced from the plasma samples of a COVID-19 patient who contracted and survived a severe form of the disease. A highly diverse antibody library was constructed by ProteoGenix and enriched via phage display using both SARS-CoV-2 natural human receptor (ACE2) and receptor-binding domain (RBD). Neutralizing antibodies were further developed using a combination of both traditional binding and advanced custom-made neutralisation assays.
The AH-5-COV cocktail provides an accessible, stable, broadly protective, and easy-to-store treatment, particularly valuable for underserved low and middle-income countries. Besides the wild type of SARS-CoV-2, all four antibodies exhibit moderate to strong activity against variants Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Epsilon, Delta, and Omicron in live virus neutralization assays (PRNT tests). The cocktail and each antibody also outperformed other monoclonal treatments currently approved or authorized by the FDA and EMA, particularly against Omicron.
“Antibody cocktails will be crucial to reduce disease severity and hospitalisation times for COVID-19,” said Khelan Patel, Chief Commercial Officer, Aseem Healthcare. “Unfortunately, since the start of 2022, patients have been left with fewer treatment options after most of the currently approved mAbs have ceased to be effective against Omicron.”
