San Diego biotech Sorrento Therapeutics announced Tuesday that it is beginning to test antibody treatments that could work against newer, more rapidly spreading strains of the coronavirus.
These strains have generated a lot of concern lately. Although the total number of new coronavirus cases continues to decline in the United States, some researchers and public health experts say that variants first found in the United Kingdom, South Africa and Brazil could fuel another increase.
Sorrento is testing a dozen antibodies that it thinks might work against these strains, as well as others that will emerge in the future.
“Rather than relying on a particular vaccine to generate an antibody response that may be protective, we take antibodies that we know are protective and introduce them,” said Robert Allen, the company’s senior vice president for antiviral and immunotherapy research.
Antibodies are Y-shaped proteins made by the immune system that can attach to a virus. If they stick hard enough in the right place, they can prevent infection.
Teaching the immune system to make the right antibodies is the main goal of today’s vaccines. Antibodies can serve as a treatment for COVID-19 by making it difficult for the virus to enter new cells, slowing the progression of the disease.
That’s the approach Regeneron and Eli Lilly have taken; both companies have antibody therapies licensed by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). But the results of the experiments published by scientists in late January showed that Eli Lilly’s antibody was not effective in blocking the South African strain of the coronavirus. And although a similar study showed that the combination of two Regeneron antibodies still worked against the South African variant, but one of the two was clearly less effective.
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Sorrento believes that at least some of the antibodies it acquired through a partnership with Mount Sinai Health System in New York will not be affected by the mutations found in these viral variants. The goal of biotechnology is to find two antibodies that can be used together to block a wide range of strains, either in the form of intravenous injection or intranasal aerosol.
The company is also studying the possibility of using circular pieces of DNA, known as plasmids, which carry the instructions for making the antibodies. When injected into a person’s arm, these pieces of DNA are absorbed by nearby muscle cells and act as a guide for them to produce antibodies.
However, all this is still far away. Until now, biotechnology has mostly conducted early-phase experiments to test whether antibodies adhere to coronavirus strains and block infection in laboratory-grown cells, building on early work by the Mount Sinai scientists. Sorrento plans to continue these experiments and could apply for FDA clearance to start a first clinical trial at the end of June.
“No one knows to this day whether vaccines will definitely prevent reinfection with different variants,” said Henry Ji, Sorrento CEO. “You have to have a means, therapeutic, ready to work.”
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