Therapeutic and Prophylactic Antibodies Against SARS-COV-2 Variants

OPPORTINITY Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), operated by the Lawrence Livermore National Security (LLNS), LLC under contract no. DE-AC52-07NA27344 (Contract 44) with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), is offering the opportunity to enter into a collaboration or to license to further develop this technology. BACKGROUND Viruses evolve gradually or suddenly resulting in variants some of which are able to effectively evade the immune system, e.g., escape neutralization by antibodies. During the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, new variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus have emerged that have been shown to evade the human immune system, posing new dangers to the public. There is an unmet need to design antibodies that can effectively neutralize a majority of variants. DESCRIPTION Starting with an antibody that neutralized some of the variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that emerged early in the pandemic but failed to neutralize Omicorn variants, a team at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, in collaboration with teams from Vanderbilt University and Los Alamos National Laboratory, has used articifical intelligence and machine learning to design antibodies that can effectively neutralize many variants of SARS-CoV-2 including certain Omicron variants. ADVANTAGES Enhanced binding to the Spike protein of various SARS-CoV-2 variants Ability to neutralize a wide variety of known SARS-CoV-2 variants Potential to neutralize SARS-CoV-2 variants that emerge in future POTENTIAL APPLICATIONS Therapeutic applications for the treatment of COVID Prophylactic applications for the prevention of COVID Diagnostic applications as sensors for SARS-CoV-2 As tools for designing broadly protective vaccine antigens DEVELOPMENT STATUS LLNL has filed a patent application covering this technology (LLNL Internal Case # IL-13742)