Seattle-based A-Alpha Bio will support research into new therapies for COVID-19 variants in a collaboration with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. The partnership is powered by a $1.1 million sub-contract awarded to the biotech company by the U.S. Department of Defense.
Monoclonal antibody therapies such as sotrovimab are key countermeasures against COVID-19. But not all antibodies work against all variants, and researchers are on the hunt for new therapies. A-Alpha Bio’s technology offers a systematic approach powered by machine learning for the discovery of new antibodies.
A-Alpha Bio’s AlphaSeq platform can detect the interactions of various proteins expressed by yeast and analyze them computationally. The company’s approach can measure millions of protein-protein interactions, such as between antibodies and viral proteins.
In the new project, the researchers will assess interactions between antibodies and panels of coronavirus variants. The data will be used to refine models for predicting which antibody sequences are likely to stick tightly to current variants and ones that may arise in the future. Such high-affinity antibodies have the potential to be powerful therapeutics.
