Ichor Biologics is awarded $300K by the NIH to develop therapeutic antibodies to treat deadly hantavirus infections.

NEW YORK–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Ichor Biologics received a $300,000 grant from the National Institutes
of Health to utilize its platform technology to develop broadly
neutralizing antibodies against deadly hantavirus infections.

Hantavirus infections cause a severe febrile disease termed hantavirus
cardiopulmonary syndrome (HCPS), which leads to death in up to 40% of
otherwise healthy individuals. Hantaviruses are typically transmitted
from rodent-to-person; however, evidence exists that at least one
strain, Andes hantavirus, is able to spread person-to-person. While
hantavirus infections are generally rare, factors such as climate change
and urbanization are expected to increase the incidence of infections in
the coming decades. Importantly, due to their high mortality rate,
potential for intentional dissemination and lack of any effective
treatment, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Centers for Disease
Control (CDC) and Department of Defense (DoD) all consider hantavirus a
potential bioterrorism threat.

New York City-based Ichor Biologics has developed a novel platform for
the development of human monoclonal antibodies to treat infectious
diseases. Ichor’s multifaceted platform identifies the key immune
responses that correlate with protection from infectious diseases and
engineers its antibody therapeutics to induce these protective immune
responses in patients suffering from acute disease. Ichor also utilizes
proprietary machine learning software to predict antibody-pathogen
binding regions and make high affinity variants of its therapeutic
antibody candidates. Moreover, Ichor not only develops its own
proprietary Ab therapeutics, but also offers Ab discovery and
development services to biotechnology companies interested in developing
antibody-based therapeutics.

“Our company is leveraging the evolution of natural resistance to
infectious agents in a few unique individuals to develop therapeutics
that will safely and effectively treat all patients suffering from
particular infectious diseases,” said CEO of Ichor Biologics, Dr.
Raymond Alvarez, Ph.D.

Previously, Ichor Biologics developed two therapeutic antibodies against
one of the most deadly strains of hantavirus and demonstrated that they
were both 100% protective in-vivo (Garrido
et al.). For this grant, Ichor aims to build on its success and
develop broadly neutralizing Abs against all hantavirus infections.

For more information go to www.ichorbiologics.com
For
further comment or question please contact Ichor Biologics at:
[email protected]

Contacts

Lynn Sferrazza
Head of Media Relations
Ichor Biologics
[email protected]