There’s also news from the ag front: BIO member SAB Biotherapeutics received $7.2 million from BARDA to develop innovative animal biotechnology with huge potential to help humans in the fight against the coronavirus.
ICYMI: SAB Biotherapeutics has genetically engineered cows to produce human reagent antibodies to help diagnose and treat the coronavirus, as Agri-Pulse previously reported.
Now, the company will partner with the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) and the U.S. Department of Defense to move forward on clinical trials and manufacturing of SAB-185, a new class of therapeutic that produces human antibodies without the need for blood donations from people who have recovered from the deadly virus.
This is a big deal. “[T]his approach produces greater quantities of the drug than the traditional human antibody donor methods,” explains the press release.
This isn’t the first time SAB’s worked with BARDA. The agency awarded SAB $5.3 million in 2016 to test the therapeutic on MERS-CoV, important research that helped the company move quickly on a response to the novel coronavirus.
The COVID-19 outbreak is demonstrating the vast potential of biotechnology to address challenges across sectors—and the need to support the work of small, innovative biotechs researching creative solutions.
And it’s why, whatever happens with the new coronavirus, we must finish the research we start. “[We] have a tremendous amount of historical information and data about how we can potentially respond to this new coronavirus. That has allowed us to have some very directed strategies about how we bring this all together in order to respond,” said SAB CEO Eddie Sullivan.
More news on BARDA:
STAT: This tiny federal agency was built to respond to a crisis like coronavirus. Now that it’s here, is BARDA ready?
