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Medicine Science

Sorrento Finds a Coronavirus Antibody That Blocks Viral Infection 100% in Preclinical Lab Experiments (techcrunch.com) 112

Therapeutics company Sorrento has made what it believes could be a breakthrough in potential treatment of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that leads to COVID-19. From a report: The company released details of its preclinical research on Friday, announcing that it has found an antibody that provides "100% inhibition of SARS-CoV-2 virus infection of healthy cells after four days incubation." The results are from a preclinical study that still has to undergo peer review. It was an in vitro laboratory study (meaning not in an actual human being), but it's still a promising development as the company continues to work on production of an antibody "cocktail" that could provide protection against SARS-CoV-2 even in case of mutations in the virus. Sorrento says it believes this antibody, which is labelled STI-1499, stood out among billions of candidates it has been screening from its extensive human antibody library for its ability to completely block the interaction of the SARS-CoV-2's spike protein with a human cell target receptor. That means it prevents the virus from attaching to the host's healthy cell, which is what leads to incubation and infection. The nature of the antibody's efficacy means that Sorrento currently believes it will be the first antibody to be included in the cocktail it is developing, which will be made up of a large number of different antibodies that show efficacy in blocking the attachment of the spike protein, in order to provide multiple avenues of protection that are designed to remain effective even if the virus mutates in transmission from person to person, or within the same individual.
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Sorrento Finds a Coronavirus Antibody That Blocks Viral Infection 100% in Preclinical Lab Experiments

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  • at mass? e.g. you can't use them as a vaccine per se because we can't manufacture them fast enough. Or am I confusing things (very likely)?
    • by skids ( 119237 ) on Friday May 15, 2020 @01:03PM (#60064040) Homepage

      I'm unfamiliar with the science on that. Even a small scale solution could be used to protect certain critical populations... essential workers in specific areas or around a small virus cluster identified early enough. Screening for this particular antibody might also help optimize convalescent plasma therapy.

      • Hmm...what's the stock market symbol for that company....?
        • by Shaitan ( 22585 )

          I wouldn't make the bold assumption that the patent won't be disregarded. In case of a health emergency most governments can disregard any sort of patent... also antibodies are discovered not made.

          • by dpille ( 547949 )
            antibodies are discovered not made

            How true. We discovered nuclear fusion that produces net energy in stars, so obviously any earthbound nuclear fusion reactor will not be patentable. Also, as you rightly point out, they discovered the molecules of antibody that they have in their possession- good thing that's enough for our purposes and nobody will need to make more.
            • by Shaitan ( 22585 )

              Unless they manufactured the cells producing the anti-bodies there is no invention to patent there either. Either way, most governments, including the US government can disregard patents and fix prices at need in emergencies.

              • by coldandcalculating ( 1311907 ) on Friday May 15, 2020 @03:44PM (#60064856)

                Unless they manufactured the cells producing the anti-bodies there is no invention to patent there either. Either way, most governments, including the US government can disregard patents and fix prices at need in emergencies.

                Monoclonal antibody patents are an important part of many biotech/pharma companies' portfolios and are enforceable. What is challenging is that someone else can develop an antibody with a different sequence that binds to the same target and produces the same effect. Your patent cannot protect you from this, but the hope for many companies is that the barrier to antibody development will allow you to gain mass marketshare before competitors go after your target. While it is a valid concern that the govt may attempt/succeed at confiscation of intellectual property, I think it that the first company to develop a successful COVID-19 prophylactic will probably profit from their initial investment.

                also antibodies are discovered not made

                Antibodies initially discovered through screening almost always go through a stringent engineering process. Antibody engineering includes but is not limited to humanization (careful substitution of animal host sequence with matching human sequence, but not so much that it *breaks* the antibody, as well as affinity maturation, which involves creating derivative sequences that can be selected for higher affinity to the target. Reduced immunogenicity, pH sensitive binding and the inclusion of other recombinant protein domains or even other antibody binding domains (bispecific antibodies) are other examples of antibody engineering. All of these modifications are absolutely included in your antibody patent and make your molecule much more defensible.

                • by Shaitan ( 22585 )

                  "Monoclonal antibody patents are an important part of many biotech/pharma companies' portfolios and are enforceable. "

                  You can't enforce a government granted artificial right if the government says otherwise and most governments confer themselves the authority to disregard medical patents for an emergency. Curing COVID-19 was never a path for growing wealth. At least not in the short term, anymore than selling water after a hurricane is an allowed path for getting rich.

                  After the crisis is over and the state

                  • Curing COVID-19 was never a path for growing wealth.

                    I would imagine the leadership at the companies doing much of the work to cure/prevent COVID disagree, otherwise they would not come up with their own individual solutions (what we're seeing now) instead of cooperating and sharing the production burden (possible altruistic non-profit scenario?).

                    In the meantime the government should be manufacturing everything that helps with the crisis without regard for patents and intellectual property. For that matter it should feel free to seize facilities to use to perform the manufacturing and distribution.

                    Since the US govt. lacks the capacity to produce these kinds of drugs at industrial scale, the only way they could replace the privately owned companies (who possess the knowhow, facilities, workforce, supply cha

            • The concept of nuclear fusion is not subject to patent; the creation of a machine to bring about the effect is.

              Likewise you won't patent an antibody, though you can possibly have protection for novel devices that manufacture, process, or distribute it.

        • Comment removed based on user account deletion
          • Seeking to profit from a global pandemic? Classy!

            Well, what's wrong?

            This isn't like this action would cause any harm to anyone experiencing problems during the pandemic...

            The stock market by nature reacts to world events, all sorts of them and this is one of them.

            Seems smart to invest in things that might help the outcome, no?

            I could see your point if this type actions harmed anyone, but it doesn't, just me gambling with my money a bit.

            So, what's the problem?

          • If GP wants to buy into the company, the company can choose to seek him the stock, thereby raising money to develop the antibodies. If that company doesn't need more funding, he'll be buying from somebody who wants to move their funding somewhere else, perhaps to a different company developing a vaccine.

            If he puts his savings to good use, funding a cure, while you put your money into buying 20" rims, he may see a benefit from doing so. If you choose to put your money into rims, you'll get - rims. Or you c

        • +1
      • by coldandcalculating ( 1311907 ) on Friday May 15, 2020 @01:49PM (#60064264)
        Monoclonal antibodies are big business and the pipeline to discover and produce them is mature. Sorrento has a large human antibody library that they likely screened as phages [youtube.com] and selected based on binding of SARS-CoV-2 spike glycoprotein. Winners are easily converted to small format single-chain variable fragment [wikipedia.org] (AKA scFv) antibodies that are relatively inexpensively produced in bacterial cultures.

        The downside with scFv is that unlike full-size antibodies (they are 6 times smaller), they are cleared more rapidly from the blood, have only one antigen binding site instead of 2, which makes it harder for them to hold on to their target (imagine doing one-handed pullups instead of two-handed or even just hanging there) and they lack the immune effector functions present on full size antibodies made natively in the body. To convert scFv to full size antibodies is generally straightforward, but production must be switched to mammalian cells (such as CHO) [wikipedia.org] that are capable of handling the more complex protein folding and modification required to make functional antibody molecules.

        Overall the strategy to protect front line workers in critical industries is probably the best one. Once a vaccine is available, it will put the monoclonal antibody out of business due to the ability to induce long-term immunity vs. the very short term immunity an antibody would provide.
    • by Dr. Tom ( 23206 ) <tomh@nih.gov> on Friday May 15, 2020 @01:04PM (#60064044) Homepage

      Normally your body produces its own antibodies. You *can* use other people's antibodies (convalescent serum) but since you can't produce them yourself, the effect is temporary. A better antibody would be good, if your body could produce it itself. A vaccine is a thing that stimulates your body to produce its own antibodies. They might not be as effective, but you can make them yourself.

    • It only makes sense if they talk about monocolonal antibodies, meaning that they have the immune cells which produce these.
      They can produce any number of antibodies by breeding more of the immune cells.
    • by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

      Monoclonal antibodies are already used for therapy, at scale. Multiple blockbuster drug scale. If the name of a drug ends with -ab it's probably an antibody.

      You're likely thinking of the antibodies they use in movies, isolated from a recovered patient. That's not terribly practical because you have to harvest them from people. Monoclonal antibodies are produced from b-cell cultures grown in large bioreactors.

    • It's perfect.

      There's no money in a cure/vaccine. The money is in a treatment.

    • There's some work to make them with genetic engineering and bacterial fermentation.

      Once they crack that and the patents expire 20 years later, they are going to be dirt cheap to produce.

    • The article says they are hoping to ramp up production so they can have 1 million doses ready by the time the FDA approves it. That's not enough for a vaccine for everyone, but I guess it's better than nothing.

      They are hoping to start phase 1 trials in July. At that point, they will join more than 400 other drug trials aimed at curing/preventing coronavirus [wikipedia.org]. Surely one of them will succeed.
    • You're confusing things just a little bit. There's a potential treatment that uses antibodies extracted from people who have recovered from the virus. That unfortunately doesn't scale very well because you need roughly the same number of donors as recipients. What this article talks about is antibodies that are made in a lab and can be manufactured in large quantities. They're planning to make a million doses while waiting for FDA approval, so they can start treatment as soon as approved.

  • by aglider ( 2435074 ) on Friday May 15, 2020 @12:57PM (#60064014) Homepage

    https://investors.sorrentother... [sorrentotherapeutics.com]

  • Marketing Release (Score:5, Insightful)

    by nagora ( 177841 ) on Friday May 15, 2020 @01:09PM (#60064064)

    "Preclinical Lab Experiment" means "We would like our share price to go up, please."

    • by HiThere ( 15173 )

      They also aren't the first. I think I've heard of other monocolonal neutralizing antibodies that have been trialed in apes and humanized mice. Pretty soon one of them should be ready for a safety trial in humans. Then you do the dosage and effectiveness trial. Then you ramp up production. If there aren't any problems give it a year for one of them to be reasonably available. ("reasonably" is a lot less than "widely".)

      Note that this isn't a vaccine. This is designed to be used on people who are alread

      • by nagora ( 177841 )

        They also aren't the first. I think I've heard of other monocolonal neutralizing antibodies that have been trialed in apes and humanized mice. Pretty soon one of them should be ready for a safety trial in humans. Then you do the dosage and effectiveness trial.

        Yeah, these guys are saying they've dropped something into a Petri dish and killed the virus. That's only a small step up from dropping bleach into the dish and killed the virus. I'm not even sure it is a step up. It certainly isn't newsworthy.

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday May 15, 2020 @01:20PM (#60064114)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • by Shaitan ( 22585 )

      "so, no trials. lab experiments can include anything from computer simulations to petri dishes full of test gel. It is meaningless outside research and academia, so the reason you would publicly announce this is likely to pump your stock."

      In the course or normal scientific and academic rigor sure. But not in a state of emergency, in a state of emergency a 30% margin of error can be a desirable outcome relative to delay while seeking higher assurance. The worst that happens is it kills people and that is wha

    • Your peer review is going to be absolutely ravenous and unforgiving

      is enough to bankrupt a company so its important to clarify what Sorrento is claiming.

      It seems like the novelty of the situation would make it pretty stupid to predict such specific outcomes like bankruptcy, and there isn't any clear mechanism to cause it.

      Are you suggesting patients who take their medications would refuse to take their pills, or that doctors would phone patients and tell them to stop taking it? Or stop prescribing anything?

    • by HiThere ( 15173 )

      The summary said they did it in glass. I.e. petri dishes or something similar.

  • I hope the cells are 100% okay too afterwards.
  • I need to get Laid :)
    • by Anonymous Coward
      The coronavirus disappearing will change nothing for you.
  • Umm I get it is still early and all that but why isnâ(TM)t this potentially amazing news the current top headline on every major news source?
  • This is bullshit!

    It is a common ploy lately for drug companies to leak bullshit news like this in order to boost their stock price.
    The fact is: They ALL have some measure of success - NONE of which really means much at this stage in the process.

    So, do NOT allow yourselves to get sucked into this bullshit!
    Nor, the excessive bullshit coming from the White House!

    It will serve you all well to learn to see thru all this crap, and vote sensibly in November!

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