"[AbCellera Biologics Inc.], of Vancouver, British Columbia, said it completed its first antibody discovery partnership with Massbiologics of the University of Massachusetts Medical School, funded by the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency under the ADEPT-PROTECT program [See ADEPT program (DARPA)  ] and directed toward rapid human antibody discovery for infectious diseases. Screening of more than 10 million single B cells discovered a panel of hundreds of ultra-rare antibodies against multiple targets from enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli. In a separate element of the collaboration, Abcellera also identified hundreds of human anti-Ebola antibodies from a single blood sample obtained from a convalescent human patient, and provided sequences of a select subset of antibodies in less than a week.  "

Subtitle : New collaboration targeting hospital-acquired infections follows on [AbCellera Biologics Inc.]’s success in two previous DARPA-funded collaborations with MassBiologics.

Vancouver, Canada (July 20, 2016) – [AbCellera Biologics Inc.], a biotechnology company specializing in the rapid discovery of monoclonal antibodies from natural immune cells, today announced its third antibody discovery collaboration with MassBiologics of the University of Massachusetts Medical School.

This pathogen is among the leading causes of hospital-acquired (nosocomial) infections worldwide, and has emerged as a major concern for patients

This new collaboration, funded by the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) under the ADEPT-PROTECT program [see ADEPT program (DARPA)], focuses on addressing the rapidly-growing, unmet global health threat caused by the multidrug resistant bacteria, Klebsiella pneumoniae. This pathogen is among the leading causes of hospital-acquired (nosocomial) infections worldwide, and has emerged as a major concern for patients. [AbCellera Biologics Inc.] will apply its single-cell antibody discovery platform to identify panels of antibody candidates against Klebsiella pneumoniae directly from human volunteers.

“AbCellera’s technology has the throughput, speed and capacity to deeply screen natural human antibody responses to these pathogens,” said Carl Hansen, CEO and co-founder of AbCellera. “We are pleased at the opportunity to expand our collaboration with MassBiologics, and believe this work will further demonstrate the strength of our approach for rapid human antibody discovery, immune profiling, and vaccine development.” This partnership builds on the successes of two earlier DARPA-funded collaborations between AbCellera and MassBiologics, from which novel antibodies for potential therapeutics to enterotoxigenic E. coli and Ebola virus were discovered.

• About AbCellera Biologics Inc. :   AbCellera is a privately held biotechnology company that provides enabling technologies for the discovery and development of monoclonal antibody (mAb) therapies directly from natural immune cells. AbCellera’s lead technology is a proprietary single cell antibody discovery platform that provides pharma and biotech partners with the ability to rapidly identify mAb therapeutic candidates from the natural immune repertoires of any species, including humans.
• About MassBiologics  :   MassBiologics of the University of Massachusetts Medical School is the only publicly owned, non-profit FDA-licensed manufacturer of vaccines and other biologic products in the United States. The laboratory was established in 1894 by the state Board of Health to produce diphtheria antitoxin. Since that time, the focus at MassBiologics has been to improve public health through applied research, development and production of biologic products. In 1997, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts transferred MassBiologics operations from the Department of Public Health to UMass Medical School to “maintain their public purpose, preserving their ability to compete in an increasingly competitive marketplace and to maximize their value to the Commonwealth.”

Vancouver, Canada (November 4, 2016) - AbCellera announced today it has entered into a new antibody discovery partnership with a global biotechnology company.  

AbCellera will use its high-throughput single-cell antibody discovery platform to perform deep screening of natural host immune repertoires to discover antibodies with defined properties. This multi-target deal takes advantage of AbCellera’s capabilities in discovering antibodies against different therapeutic targets and leverages its ability to work across species.

Through this project, AbCellera has the potential to receive downstream payments in the form of clinical milestones and royalties.

• About AbCellera Biologics Inc. :  AbCellera is a privately-held biotechnology company that provides enabling technologies for the discovery and development of monoclonal antibody (mAb) therapies directly from natural immune cells.   AbCellera’s lead technology is a proprietary single-cell antibody discovery platform that provides pharma and biotech partners with the ability to rapidly identify mAb therapeutic candidates from the natural immune repertoires of any species, including humans.
• Media Contact :   Kevin Heyries Telephone: 604.827.4151 Email:media@abcellera.com

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“The classic biotech model is to raise a bunch of money and then work internally on a product,” said AbCellera CEO Carl Hansen. “Usually, the company is built to be sold.”

AbCellera’s shareholders would do very well should the company be acquired by a larger player, but Hansen is determined to increase the business, securing steady cash flow by selling access to its technology and taking a stake in the drugs it helps to develop.

U.S. drugs giant Pfizer placed a large bet on AbCellera’s functional antibody discovery platform earlier this year, the fourth in a series of such deals with large pharma companies.

“We are using some technology developed at the University of British Columbia that allows us to mine natural immune responses,” Hansen explained. “We can take a sample from a patient and within a day sort through millions of cells that make antibodies in order to find the molecules that are best suited as candidates to build therapeutics.”

In addition to research resources provided by their senior development partner, AbCellera will receive up to $90 million in upfront money, milestone payments and royalties contingent on Pfizer’s commercialization of antibodies generated by the collaboration.

“We’ve been approached by two or three groups interested in acquisition, but it would be short-sighted to sell,” he said. “Our vision is to grow this company in Canada. We are on a very steep trajectory and we have big plans for where this can go.”

  [...]

 Under DARPA’s Pandemic Prevention Platform (P3) program, [AbCellera Biologics Inc.] will apply its state-of-the art capabilities in human antibody discovery and immune profiling to establish rapid countermeasures for viral pandemics.

Vancouver, Canada (March 13, 2018) - [AbCellera Biologics Inc.] announced today that it was awarded a contract from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to develop rapid countermeasures against viral outbreaks. Over the four-year contract, AbCellera will receive up to USD $30 million in funding to establish an end-to-end platform for rapid pandemic response, and will lead an internationally recognized team of experts in virology, antibody discovery, and gene therapy.

The project is part of the Pandemic Prevention Platform (P3), a high-priority initiative of DARPA’s Biological Technology Office. The P3 program seeks to develop a robust technology platform for pandemic response capable of developing field-ready medical countermeasures within 60 days of isolation of a viral pathogen. To achieve this ambitious goal, AbCellera and its partners will develop and integrate innovative technologies for viral culture and production, rapid human antibody discovery, protein engineering, and delivery of nucleic acid-encoded antibodies as prophylactic protection against viral infection. [AbCellera Biologics Inc.]'s platform development and testing will include the discovery of thousands of human antibodies against a wide array of influenza strains and validation using a variety of other high-priority viral pathogens. In addition to the proposal submitted by the AbCellera-led team, the P3 program has funded three other consortia led by Medimmune, the Duke Human Vaccine Institute, and Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

Carl Hansen, founding CEO of [AbCellera Biologics Inc.], commented: “Through the P3 program, DARPA has set a bold vision to establish effective response capabilities for viral threats. The recent Ebola and Zika pandemics have made it clear that we are not equipped to deal with viral pandemics. The severity of seasonal flu this year is a sobering reminder that viral outbreaks present a serious risk to public health for which we must be better prepared. We are honoured to lead a team to help achieve the important goals of the P3 program.”

Col. Matthew Hepburn, the DARPA P3 Program Manager, noted in DARPA’s original announcement of the program: “We need to be able to move at this speed considering how quickly viral outbreaks can get out of control. The technology needs to work on any viral disease, whether it’s one humans have faced before or not. If we’re successful, DARPA could take viral infectious disease outbreaks off the table.” [...]

An announcement of the P3 program was made earlier by DARPA: http://www.darpa.mil/news-events/2018-02-22

• About AbCellera Biologics Inc. :   AbCellera is a privately held company that engages in partnerships to discover and develop next-generation therapeutic antibodies. AbCellera’s single-cell platform integrates end-to-end capabilities for therapeutic antibody discovery through a combination of technologies including proprietary immunizations, microfluidics, high-throughput imaging, genomics, computation, and laboratory automation. Ultra-deep screening of single B cells allows unprecedented access to natural immune responses, enabling rapid isolation of large and diverse panels of high-quality lead antibodies from any species, including humans.

AbCellera, a biotech startup based in Vancouver, B.C., announced Thursday that it has raised a $10 million series A round to expand its antibody therapy discovery program.

AbCellera co-founder Véronique Lecault told GeekWire the company had raised less than $1 million prior to the new round, making this the first significant funding raised by the company. The round was led by Silicon Valley fund DCVC Bio and one of the fund’s managing partners, John Hamer, will join AbCellera’s board of directors.

AbCellera also announced Lecault will join the company’s board of directors and biotech executive Doug Janzen will step down from his former role as the chair of the board.

Lecault co-founded AbCellera in 2012 along with CEO Carl Hansen, business development and strategy leader Kevin Heyries, engineer Daniel Da Costa and cell screening group leader Kathleen Lisaingo. Both AbCellera and its technology grew out of work at the University of British Columbia. It now has 60 employees.

The company’s platform uses single B cell screening and advanced sequencing to unearth huge amounts of data on antibodies. It then uses machine learning and custom data visualization tools to narrow down the data into antibodies that could be used for a variety of therapeutic options, like antibody immunotherapy treatments for cancer.

AbCellera specializes in therapies that address challenging targets. Its partners include the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and biotech giants like Sanofi, Merck and Pfizer.

“With this financing, we will double-down on our partnership business that has enjoyed profitable, triple-digit growth over the past 3 years,” AbCellera CEO Carl Hansen said in a press release. “In DCVC Bio, we have found the ideal funding partner to help us accelerate the success of our full-stack antibody discovery engine, one that integrates artificial intelligence with industry-leading microfluidic screening technology.”

SOMETIME IN THE next day or two, a medical courier will deliver a styrofoam cooler to the offices of [AbCellera Biologics Inc.], a biotech firm headquartered in downtown Vancouver, British Columbia. Inside the box, packed in dry ice, will be a vial of blood prepared by researchers at the US National Institutes of Health, who drew it from a patient infected with the Covid-19 coronavirus.

The blood sample will be taken to AbCellera’s laboratory and placed in a microfluidic chip the size of a credit card that will isolate millions of white blood cells and put each one into a tiny chamber. Then the device will record images of each cell every hour, searching for the antibodies each one produces to fight the coronavirus.

“We can check every single cell within hours that it comes out of the patient,” says [AbCellera Biologics Inc.]’s CEO, Carl Hansen. “Now with a single patient sample we can generate 400 antibodies in a single day of screening.”

Antibodies are proteins that the immune system creates to remove viruses and other foreign objects from the body. Vaccines work by stimulating the body’s own immune system to produce antibodies against an invading virus. This immunity remains, should the virus attack again in the future. Vaccines provide protection for years, but they also take a long time to develop. Currently, there is no vaccine that can be used against the virus that causes Covid-19, although drug companies like Johnson & Johnson and Cambridge-based Moderna are working on developing them. So researchers are instead investigating whether an infusion of antibodies alone can be used as a short-lived—but immediately available—treatment to protect doctors and hospital workers, as well as family members of infected patients who need it right away.

The Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or Darpa, launched its Pandemic Prevention Platform program two years ago with the goal of isolating and reproducing antibodies to deadly new viruses within 60 days. It enlisted researchers at Duke and Vanderbilt medical schools, as well as [AbCellera Biologics Inc.] and pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca.

In preparation for an outbreak like the coronavirus now gripping China, scientists with the program made test runs using viruses responsible for severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS). Both are members of the coronavirus family and closely related to Covid-19.

After isolating these antibodies, the researchers then capture their genetic code, using it as a blueprint to mass produce them. Their goal is to create an antibody treatment that can be injected directly into a patient, giving them an instant boost against the invading coronavirus.

“We are going to take the patient’s blood, identify the antibodies, and do it very rapidly,” said [Dr. Amy Lynn (Haas) Jenkins (born 1979)], program manager at Darpa’s biological technologies office, which is supporting [AbCellera Biologics Inc.]’s work with a four-year, $35 million grant. “Once we have the antibodies isolated, then we can give them back to people who are not yet sick. It’s similar to a vaccine and will prevent infection. The difference is that vaccines will last a long time. Our approach is immediate immunity and doesn’t last as long.”

If all goes well, [Dr. Amy Lynn (Haas) Jenkins (born 1979)] said, the antibody countermeasure would last several months rather than the several years that vaccines are effective. That said, the researchers still need to test the safety and efficacy of this antibody protein in animal and human clinical trials.

Of course, developing a treatment using antibodies isn’t simple. First, only one of the 15 US patients struck by Covid-19 has so far agreed to donate blood. (China has thousands of infected patients, but US researchers haven’t been able to get their blood for research here.) That means that [AbCellera Biologics Inc.] is on the waiting list to get a few drops of that valuable sample, along with several other companies and academic institutions that are partnering with Darpa and the CDC to develop treatments. “We have mobilized our team and are getting in place as soon as it arrives,” says Ester Falconer, AbCellera’s head of research and development. “We are raring to go.”

A team of Chinese scientists announced on January 31 that they had found an antibody which binds to the surface of the coronavirus and appears to neutralize it. Their research paper, which appeared as a preprint on the site BioXArchiv, hasn’t been peer reviewed by other scientists. And it is not clear how effective the antibody would be once it is mass produced and then tested in animals or humans.

Should antibody treatments work, there’s also the question of who would get them first, whether its first-line responders in specific hospitals where Covid-19 patients are being treated, or perhaps people at home with family members who test positive. (The antibody supply will likely be distributed by federal public health officials.)

Another potential looming issue is a bottleneck for scaling up antibody mass production. Medical experts say it's unlikely that pharmaceutical makers can make enough to protect everyone who needs them. “The constraint is production capacity,” says [Dr. James Vincent Lawler (born 1969)], an emerging disease specialist at the University of Nebraska Medical Center who is not involved in the Darpa program. “We are getting pretty good at finding appropriate antibody preparations. But the problem we still have is: How do we produce those rapidly enough to have an impact in a global epidemic?”

To protect the doctors, nurses, and health care workers at the more than 5,500 hospitals and medical centers in the US would take more than 1 million doses of treatment, according to [Dr. James Vincent Lawler (born 1969)]. “Scaling to a million doses of antibody product is a heavy lift to do in a few months,” he says. “We don’t have scaling capacity for therapeutics or prophylaxis in that time frame. In two years, we could get to that point.”

Despite those obstacles, medical researchers involved in the Darpa program say they are ready to fire up sophisticated tools for cellular screening and imaging that have been boosted in recent years by advances in machine learning and pattern recognition. [AbCellera Biologics Inc.]’s machine is trained to look through millions of images to find the perfect one of an antibody binding to the surface of the virus.

At Vanderbilt University’s School of Medicine, Robert Carnahan is also waiting for the blood from that first US patient sample to run through Vanderbilt’s own antibody screening technology. Carnahan and his colleagues at the Vanderbilt Vaccine Center used their method last year to find new antibodies against the Zika virus. Their initial test resulted in 800 antibodies that were narrowed down to 20 for animal testing, and finally one that stopped the virus from spreading. That entire process only took 78 days, Carnahan said.

“We need the most potent antibodies,” Carnahan said. “That requires a lot of work. Most of the work in our lab during the Zika trial was to take a small subset into these more detailed studies. In the midst of a pandemic, you don’t have that luxury.”

Carnahan said he expects to receive the US coronavirus blood sample any day now. Given the lack of US patients, his colleagues are also trying to get them from infected patients living outside of China. But acquiring the samples requires working directly with hospital administrators and public health officials in each country, because no international body is yet coordinating a sharing program.

“Everyone’s anxious,” Carnahan said about the researchers on his team at Vanderbilt. “When the human samples become available, things will progress quickly. And it’s probably OK from a safety perspective that these samples aren’t flying all around the country.”