Pharmaceutical giant Amgen is aiming to develop a new drug to treat and prevent COVID-19, using insights from Seattle-based Adaptive Biotechnologies’ system for sequencing the human immune system, under an expanded partnership announced by the companies Thursday morning.
In an extraordinary move, Adaptive and Amgen say they are beginning work immediately, even before finalizing financial details and other terms of the partnership.
“Our strong history of collaboration with Adaptive gives us the ability to immediately mobilize our combined resources to help address the urgency in controlling the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Amgen CEO and Chairman Robert Bradway in a statement. “Working with Adaptive and using their viral-neutralizing antibody platform will expedite our ability to bring a promising new medicine into clinical trials as quickly as possible.”
Adaptive says it will use its platform to identify naturally occurring antibodies in the immune systems of COVID-19 survivors, by analyzing blood samples to find antibodies that neutralize the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes the disease. Amgen will then use those findings to develop therapies to treat COVID-19, and potentially prevent the disease among those with a greater risk of exposure, including health care workers.
The partnership between Adaptive and Amgen is one of many efforts by scientists and major pharmaceutical companies to develop therapies and vaccines to combat the novel coronavirus. The resulting disease, COVID-19, has killed more than 50,000 people worldwide as of Thursday, out of more than 980,000 confirmed cases.
Giants including Gilead Sciences, Johnson & Johnson and GlaxoSmithKline have joined the race along with a host of smaller biotech companies and research institutions. But the most promising vaccine candidates are believed to be at least 12 to 18 months away from being released to the public.
Antibodies can help fight off infection by binding to the virus and preventing it from infecting a cell. Once researchers are able to determine which antibodies are best at neutralizing the virus, they can engineer small proteins that mimic those of the virus itself and inject them back into the person’s body. Seattle’s Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and the University of Washington are among many research institutions around the globe asking COVID-19 survivors to donate blood to help find potential treatments.
The companies say the goal is “to accelerate the development of a potential antibody against COVID-19 as fast as possible for patients in need.” They did not give a specific timeline.
Adaptive was founded in 2009 by brothers Chad Robins, a Cornell grad and Wharton School MBA, and Harlan Robins, longtime head of the Computational Biology Program at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. The company, which also has major partnerships with Microsoft and Genentech, went public last year and employed more than 450 people as of the end of last year.
Adaptive stock is up 2 percent in early trading, and Amgen is up 2.5 percent.
