For a rapid response to COVID-19 and its growing array of new mutants, Prellis Bio printed 960 synthetic lymph nodes and used them to generate 300 human antibodies that bind to the SARS-CoV-2 spike proteins… all in less than 30 days. This method applies to any new pathogen, viral or bacterial

From today’s news: “Three hundred virus-specific IgG antibodies is a tremendous number to have at this stage. Our pipeline for class-switched antibodies has produced an order of magnitude larger pool than the typical antibody development program,” said Erin Stephens, PhD and Director of Tissue Engineering at Prellis.

Notably, the process does not require an infected donor, extensive screening, or generation of antibodies in animals, dramatically reducing the time to produce a targeted library of candidate antibodies to less than one month.

Prellis Bio recently closed a $4.3 million investment round led by Future Ventures, Khosla Ventures, and IndieBio to support the development of human anti-SARS-CoV2 antibodies.

“We funded the formation of an army of synthetic human lymph nodes to identify antibody therapies for SARS-CoV2 and potentially all new pandemic diseases, both viral and bacterial,” said Steve Jurvetson, co-founder of Future Ventures. “It’s like having a surrogate human immune system from hundreds of people without needing to sample from infected patients, offering a rapid response procedure for any pathogen.”

Looking forward, Prellis Biologics is planning to address known mutations in SARS-CoV2 by using their Externalized Human Immune System technology to produce libraries of antibodies that recognize mutations in the SARS-CoV2 virus. “Novel mutations are being found in SARS-CoV2 across the globe. It’s likely that these mutations will impact vaccine and therapeutic antibody efficacy,” says Prellis Founder and CEO Melanie Matheu, PhD. “With our rapid antibody development platform, we can move as quickly as the virus is changing, and we’re planning to get ahead of it.”

Prellis Bio develops synthetic tissue products for R&D, therapeutic production, and organ transplant using its holographic printing system that is capable of matching and accurately replicating human organ and tissue structures. We are dedicated to using synthetic human tissues to cleanly produce therapeutic products and ultimately, solving the global human organ transplant shortage.”

2 responses to “3D-Printed Lymph Nodes for SARS-CoV-2, Zyka and Novel Mutants”

  1. jurvetson Avatar
    jurvetson

    my prior post on Prellis Bio:Prellis Biologics: Building an Externalized Immune SystemAnd some details on the new new Coronavirus mutationsCurrently Known Mutations of SARS-CoV-2We have been keeping an eye on this since it could undermine certain universal vaccine and therapy strategies, and it motivates the work to have a rapid-Ab therapy capability.

    Another motivation is the weak immune response seen in certain humans. Early signs from China: “A team from Fudan University analysed blood samples from 175 patients discharged from the Shanghai Public Health Clinical Centre and found that nearly a third had unexpectedly low levels of antibodies. In some cases, antibodies could not be detected at all.

    The low amounts of antibodies could affect herd immunity, resistance to the disease among the general population to stop its spread.

    Vaccine developers may need to pay particular attention to these patients. If the real virus could not induce antibody response, the weakened version in the vaccine might not work in these patients either."

    Reply
  2. jurvetson Avatar
    jurvetson

    I watched the Bill Gates TED interview on Monday. And this quote stuck out for me:

    "The silver lining is that we will have some additional tools for the fall. We should start to have monoclonal antibodies, which is the single therapeutic that I’m most excited about,” Gates said. But Gates said it’s unlikely that any vaccines will become widely available before the end of the year.” — GeekWire

    He also shared that the pathogen is unique in not having a tell-tale cough for virality… Singing and talking are vectors of asymptomatic spread from the upper respiratory tract. So, he concludes that an airplane ride is pretty safe compared to a restaurant where most people are talking.

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *