As COVID-19, the disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 novel coronavirus continues to spread across the globe, Vancouver-based AbCellera and Eli Lilly have teamed up to co-develop antibody products for the treatment and prevention of the virus that was declared a pandemic this week.
The collaboration will leverage AbCellera’s rapid pandemic response platform that has already identified over 500 unique fully human antibody sequences from a COVID-19 blood sample. AbCellera said that within one week of receiving that blood sample, it screened more than 5 million immune cells looking for ones that produced functional antibodies that helped the patient neutralize the virus and recover from the disease.
