Racing Against Time: Rapid, High-Throughput Discovery of Antibody Therapeutics for SARS-CoV-2

Antiviral human monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) are promising drug candidates for preventing or treating severe viral diseases, but the long timelines—on the order of years—needed for antibody discovery, functional analysis, preclinical studies, and manufacturing limit their rapid deployment and use as immunotherapeutic.

Vanderbilt University Medical Center researchers Robert Carnahan and Pavlo Gilchuk are attempting to compress this timeline by integrating a series of advances in single-cell messenger RNA sequence analysis, bioinformatics, synthetic biology and high-throughput functional analysis. Their research provides a potential framework for expedited antibody discovery programs against viral pathogens of global concern.

During the webinar, viewers will:

• Hear about the integration of technological advances in high-throughput, single-cell analysis to enable rapid discovery of potent human mAbs
• Discover a streamlined approach to antiviral mAb discovery and therapeutic potency verification
• Learn how the development and use of mAbs as alternative antiviral therapeutics compares with conventional antiviral countermeasures, such as vaccines or small-molecule drugs