WALTHAM, MASS. (WHDH) - Dozens of companies are currently hard at work on a coronavirus vaccine. But, one local company says they are working on a different way to give people immunity to the virus — and it has to do with antibodies.
Adimab, a biopharmaceutical company based in Lebanon, New Hampshire, announced Thursday that is has formed “Adagio Therapeutics” a subsidiary based in Waltham that will focus on antibody research.
“What we’ve done is isolate the most potent molecules the body produces to protect against infection and upon injection, into a patient, you can then prevent them from future infections,” Adimab CEO and Dartmouth Professor Tillman Gerngross Ph.D. said.
The treatment would consist of two shots a year.
“They protect you at a very high level of protection, over 90 percent is our desired goal,” he explained.
Earlier in the week, Moderna, a biotech company in Cambridge, announced a major breakthrough in the development of a vaccine.
That treatment boosted the immune systems of all 45 volunteers with only minor side effects reported.
The next phase of clinical trials will require 30,000 people.
Gerngross said the novel virus is continuing to surprise researchers but that his company could hold the key to keeping people healthy.
“Unfortunately, we’ve seen it with other coronaviruses, with SARS and MERS, the antibodies just go down very quickly after the infection and that just bodes very poorly for second or third round of infection and it bodes very poorly for vaccines. That’s very unusual, that just doesn’t happen. So the situation where antibodies may be a better approach is not something I expected,” he explained. “Something we really haven’t seen before.”
The company hopes to start human trials by the end of the year.
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