University of Hyderabad (UoH) and CSIR-Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) are collaborating with Vins Bioproducts Ltd., an antisera manufacturing company incubated at UoH’s BioNEST incubation centre, to develop antibody fragment-based immunotherapy for immediate treatment for COVID-19.
The use of antibodies has been an effective method in protecting against several human and animal diseases . Although plasma-based passive immunity against COVID-19 has been reported to be working well in clinical trials, it has several theoretical and practical concerns including limitation in the availability of human plasma samples.
Hence, scientists have been exploring alternative strategies of using horses or other higher animals to generate antibodies against the SARS-COV2 viral antigens. The antibodies, raised in horses using inactivated coronavirus is fractionated and purified to produce antibody fragments for neutralising coronavirus in patients for recovery.
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This collaborative effort plans to use this platform technology which has been providing neutralising antibodies from horses for a variety of life-threatening pathologies in humans such as anti-venoms, anti-toxins and anti-virals. Horse-based immunoglobulins can be produced in large quantities as a promising alternative therapy as it would be economical and can be made readily available to a larger population. The research team is hopeful about this treatment and feels this treatment would be more productive, efficient and safe to meet the enormous requirement for the treatment of COVID-19 infection.
The UoH team is headed by Nooruddin Khan, an associate professor at the Department of Animal Biology, School of Life Sciences. Prof. Khan’s laboratory specialises in the area of immunology, infection biology, and vaccinology. The CCMB team is led by Krishnan Harinivas, principal scientist specialising in the area of molecular virology while Krishna Mohan is leading the research team at VINS and specialises in bioprocessing and product development.
CEO of Vins Bioproducts Ltd. Siddharth Daga exuded confidence in fast track development by complimenting the technical and infrastructural strengths available in the three collaborating organisations and making available a very specific therapeutic anti viral product in the shortest possible time.
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UoH Vice-Chancellor Appa Rao Podile hoped the collaboration would result in a successful development of antibody fragment-based immunotherapy for immediate treatment.