Centivax Inc, the therapeutics spinout of Contract Research Organization Distributed Bio Inc, announced today a licensing agreement with Thermo Fisher Scientific.
Thermo Fisher has developed and evaluated several variants of Centivax’s highly specific and effective therapeutic antibody candidates against COVID-19 for use in research, including flow cytometry, histopathology, in vitro and in vivo neutralization, Luminex and ELISA applications. These products are now commercially available to academic and industry research laboratories.
Centivax’s engineered antibodies have been validated for potency and efficacy both in vitro and in vivo, protecting an animal model of hamsters from SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. Confirmed simultaneously at two independent national laboratories, the Centivax lead antibody was found to be effective both as a therapeutic for infected hamsters as well as a prophylactic (preventative) measure to protect hamsters from developing symptoms upon exposure to SARS-CoV-2.
“This is a tremendous opportunity for Centivax and our COVID-19 efforts,” says Dr. Jacob Glanville, Founder, CEO, and President of Centivax and Distributed Bio. “Thermo Fisher Scientific is an unrivaled company in the scientific community. Licensing our antibodies globally allows laboratories across the planet to be empowered with new tools to defeat the coronavirus. We are confident this agreement is yet another referendum on the unique quality of our antibodies, enabling tools for research and new diagnostics while we at Centivax accelerate our antibody therapeutic through clinical trials and out to the world’s hospitals.”
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About Centivax
Centivax is a therapeutics company founded to treat, cure and eradicate complex pathogens of the 21st century. This goal is executed by combining computationally guided therapeutic engineering to efficiently make break-through medicines, with a unique business strategy to make sure that we have the freedom to pursue medicines that matter and sell those medicines at a price that the world can afford. Centivax is spun out of a series of internally incubated technology projects run at Distributed Bio. These technologies were made possible by the emerging field of computational immunology and developed by Centivax Founders over a decade. Central to Centivax’s DNA is a commitment to running a lean business that keeps our medicines affordable. We focus on common-sense rapid product creation as a means of ensuring a sustainable R&D budget while reducing our reliance on external funding and ensuring that our incentives are always aligned with making medicines that matter. In 2019, Centivax’s universal vaccine technology had been awarded a Gates Foundation Grand Challenge “End the Pandemic Threat” award and was featured in the Netflix documentary series Pandemic: How to Prevent an Outbreak. In addition to the Gates Foundation, Centivax antibody discovery programs are supported by the National Institute of Health, Charles River Laboratories Safety, the Department of Defense Medical Technology Enterprise Consortium program, and the Naval Medical Research Center.
Contact:
Press & Communications: info@centivax.com
Therapeutics & Diagnostics: partner@centivax.com
centivax.com | info@centivax.com | Twitter: @centivax |
About Distributed Bio
Distributed Bio is a biologics discovery contract research organization and a field leader in computational immune-engineering of biomedicines. Our mission is to create breakthrough technologies to drug previously challenging targets (GPCRs, ion channels, pMHC complexes, condition-specific binders, anti-idiotypes, and broadly neutralizing viral epitopes), engineering IgGs, CAR-Ts, VHHs, bi-specifics and other biologic modalities to suit any therapeutic area. Distributed Bio’s SuperHuman 2.0 computationally optimized antibody library contains more than 76 billion unique fully human and computationally diversified antibodies, enabling rapid recovery of high affinity, therapeutic-quality antibodies against novel therapeutic targets like SARS-CoV-2. SuperHuman2.0 has been licensed by numerous pharmaceutical companies and can be accessed through Distributed Bio discovery services to generate antibodies against any target. In addition, the Distributed Bio Tumbler platform is another industry standard antibody optimization technology, licensed by multiple pharmaceutical partners to optimize the developability and potency of biologic medicines. Distributed Bio has been profitable since day one in 2012 with no venture capital investment.
Contact:
Press & Communications: info@distributedbio.com
Antibody Discovery & Optimization: bd@distributedbio.com
distributedbio.com | info@distributedbio.com | Twitter: @distributedbio
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