As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to impact us all personally and professionally, the amount of scientific brainpower that is being dedicated to solving this crisis has been unprecedented. Over the last several weeks, researchers and companies around the world have been racing to develop a variety of potential solutions, from existing therapeutics to new diagnostics and treatments.

At Adaptive, we recently announced an expanded partnership with Amgen to develop a potential antibody therapy to prevent or treat COVID-19. I’m here to answer some frequently asked questions about the work we’re doing together to address this pandemic.

What are Adaptive and Amgen doing to fight COVID-19?

Through this partnership, we are identifying certain antibodies, called neutralizing antibodies, from the blood of patients who are actively fighting or have recently recovered from COVID-19 and then using those to develop a therapeutic. We are analyzing the immune response to COVID-19 from the blood of some recovered patients to find the best antibodies that could neutralize the virus.

Once we have found the best antibody candidates using our high-throughput screening platform, Amgen will then select, develop and manufacture the strongest antibodies into a therapeutic. If successful, the therapeutic would be used for treating patients fighting the disease, as well as preventing infection in those with heightened exposure, such as healthcare workers.

What is the rationale behind antibody therapy?

We have seen some early successes transfusing convalescent plasma from people who have recovered from the virus to treat those who are fighting severe cases of the disease. However, it isn’t a scalable or sustainable solution to the worldwide problem.

Building on the philosophy behind this approach, we want to leverage what worked in the immune response from survivors and infuse the best of those antibodies into people currently fighting the virus. Adaptive’s technology enables us to find the right antibodies and Amgen’s technology enables a scalable solution – the best of both worlds.

What are neutralizing antibodies, and why are you focused on those vs. other types of antibodies?

Neutralizing antibodies are a special set of antibodies that happen to interfere with the biological function of an invading virus. What makes these antibodies particularly special, and why just one or a few of these antibodies could be packaged into a treatment, is their ability to fight the virus all on their own.

How is Adaptive and Amgen’s approach different from others working on antibody therapies?

While others are working on an antibody solution, there are two distinguishing features about our platform which makes the combined Adaptive/Amgen approach unique.

First, our platform lets the immune system reveal the best antibodies against the virus without restricting our search to a pre-identified target. In contrast, some groups are using biological insights about this virus combined with comparative genomics of related viruses to select targets such as an epitope on the spike protein. This is an excellent hypothesis and lets you reduce your search space massively and move fast and we hope it will work in many patients.

Second, we have the scale and speed to assess a much broader pool of possible antibodies against a wider range of targets. Our platform allows us to look at the full sequence of all of the activated antibodies in patients currently fighting the virus. We then funnel them down through a series of techniques to find those that neutralize most efficaciously. I’ll give you a basketball analogy, since we’re all yearning for some sports: We’re scouting for the “Michael Jordan” of antibodies. With Adaptive’s platform, we can scout more candidates than any other team, at one time, to find the “MVP” of antibodies to neutralize this virus. FYI, I grew up in Chicago. This may also dictate whether we develop a single antibody therapy or a cocktail of antibodies, and when along the treatment continuum neutralizing antibodies specific to COVID-19 might matter most.

Why are you confident this approach will work?

Most RNA viruses, such as influenza and Ebola, mutate quickly. For this reason, single antibody therapies have only had mild success, as you are effectively trying to hit a moving target. However, SARS-CoV-2 is an RNA virus that mutates more slowly than other RNA viruses. While it does mutate and there is expected to be an increasing number of strains, they are more genetically related to each other. This relative stability lends itself well to a neutralizing antibody therapy, since the virus will be largely the same in most people, and therefore able to be treated with a single antibody therapy.

How do neutralizing antibodies fit with other solutions being developed for COVID-19?

Based on everything we know about this coronavirus, we expect that it will, at some point, transition from being pandemic to endemic. This means there would be an ongoing need for a therapeutic over potentially many years, and most certainly for the foreseeable future.

Ideally, a global vaccine and other effective treatments, including more reliable testing options, will be available in the near future.

In reality, it may take a while to get a vaccine that works broadly and can be administered across the whole world. Even after a vaccine is found, we can expect periodic outbreaks that further the need for therapies as part of the long-term solution paradigm for this virus. In addition, we know that it’s unlikely one treatment solution will work for everyone, especially as we learn more about who is at higher risk for having a harder recovery.

How does this partnership differ with what Adaptive is doing with Microsoft?

Adaptive is harnessing its immune medicine platform to pursue two separate but synergistic applications to combat COVID-19. Using the same immune medicine platform that we are working with to deliver antibody candidates to Amgen, we are also working with Microsoft to decode the T cell response to COVID-19.

What gives you hope?

At Adaptive, we have long believed the immune system holds the key to diagnosing and treating almost all diseases. It’s really encouraging to see so much research and focus in this moment on the immune response to COVID-19.

Additionally, I have never seen more companies set aside their “bottom line” to collectively solve a global crisis. We are incredibly proud and inspired to be in the fight with all those who have committed their brainpower, expertise and resources to defeating COVID-19. It’s not a matter of who gets there first, just that we – all of us – bring the world much-needed solutions for this pandemic and future threats.

During war time, we come together. Collectively, tremendous progress has been made in the war against COVID-19. New tests, clinical trials, and public-private partnerships to enable solutions have been quickly mobilized to curb the impact of this pandemic.

If only it were enough. New information about the virus – and what we are learning about it – is breaking at a dizzying pace. We are learning that the disease may be far more prevalent than we originally realized, but significant issues remain with testing. We now know that the first cases in the U.S. could trace back to early February, and with the high rate of false positives and negatives with the most recent serology tests, we still have no reliable way to get an accurate picture of who has and has not been infected. In this marathon, we have a long way to go to achieve widespread and standardized access to testing, tracking and tracing, and to ensure efficacious therapeutic and vaccine approaches can be made available to everyone.

Earlier this week, I joined biotech colleagues for the Alexandria Summit/Duke-Margolis Webinar: COVID-19 Policy Forum 2020 to discuss how we can accelerate this effort. My message: we cannot afford to make this a linear process.

At Adaptive, we are contributing important information about the adaptive immune response to COVID-19 that can advance global efforts to better diagnose and treat this virus. On the diagnostic side, we are expanding our partnership with Microsoft to decode the immune system’s response to COVID-19. As we make progress in this effort, we will be making the data publicly available to help advance other solutions to address COVID-19.

While there has been great progress with PCR and serology tests, there are still both standardization and biological issues that are making it hard to understand how widespread the virus really is and who has truly developed immunity. We are hopeful that a cellular immune test may resolve some of these issues. This is critical for government entities to set policies to enable life to resume and the economy to reopen.

On the therapeutic side, we are partnering with Amgen to identify and develop therapeutic antibodies from the blood of patients who are actively fighting or have recently recovered from COVID-19. Like others, we think that neutralizing antibodies may be effective since this virus seems to mutate more slowly than other RNA viruses and mutated strains are genetically similar.

We have seen some early successes using convalescent plasma therapy to boost the ability of patients with severe cases of COVID-19 to fight off the infection, but unfortunately, it can’t be scaled, nor standardized. With Amgen, we are using our high-throughput way of screening immune cells to find the best antibodies or what we like to say, the Michael Jordan of antibodies. These could be used off-the-shelf to treat patients fighting the disease and to potentially prevent disease in those with heightened exposure, such as healthcare workers.

It’s early days, but we are already seeing some exciting results. I’m confident that we can deliver potent antibodies to Amgen in the coming months.

It has been amazing to see such an unprecedented level of collaboration. This is the biggest challenge any of us have ever faced. I tell my family, and my colleagues, that we must pace ourselves. We are in this for the long haul, but we’ll do it together.

Be well,
Chad

During this time of COVID-19, our communities – both local and global – are coming together in ways we’ve never witnessed before. Every evening, neighborhoods across Seattle and beyond stand outside and make noise to celebrate our healthcare workers on the front lines. Car manufacturers are assembling life-saving patient equipment. Volunteers are sewing masks by the thousands for their local hospitals. Professionally and personally, we are facing this challenge together.

Today, we are proud to announce an exciting new endeavor with our long-time partner Amgen to contribute a meaningful solution to this pandemic. Together, we are in a unique position to combine our expertise to create a specific type of antibody therapy that we think may make a big impact as society continues to grapple with COVID-19 for the foreseeable future.

Neutralizing antibodies defend a healthy cell from a virus by interfering with the biological function of the virus. The combination of SARS-CoV-2 being highly contagious, slowly mutating, and completely new to the human race makes it uniquely well suited to respond to neutralizing antibodies.

Our immune medicine platform will focus on B cells responding to recent infection and screen tens of thousands of antibody secreting cells derived from patients who have recovered from COVID-19. Through a custom computational workflow, Adaptive will select promising, naturally occurring, and fully human antibody candidates for Amgen to turn into a potential therapeutic. Amgen is a well-suited partner with their world-class antibody engineering and drug development capabilities.

At Adaptive, we are in the fortunate position to have an opportunity to make a meaningful difference by pursuing two separate but synergistic applications to combat COVID-19. Less than two weeks ago, we announced the extension of our partnership with Microsoft to find the relevant T-cell receptor signature for COVID-19, which may address some key diagnostic challenges. Study data will be made available to the global scientific community to help speed progress in the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of the disease. With this new Amgen partnership, we are extending our immune medicine platform to identify and characterize human neutralizing antibodies based on B-cell receptors.

Time is of the essence and our teams are already moving forward with a heightened sense of urgency around this important work. We have enjoyed a long partnership with Amgen and we are proud to work together as we face this challenge.

Stay well,
Chad

At Adaptive Biotechnologies, we are focused on decoding how the body’s immune system works to inform the development of clinical products to detect and treat disease. Two years ago, we partnered with Microsoft and have been leveraging our immune medicine platform along with their hyperscale machine learning capabilities to map population-wide adaptive immune responses to enable the earlier and accurate detection of many diseases through the identification of disease-specific immune response signatures.

Enter coronavirus.

Leveraging what we know about the immune system, we are privileged to announce today that we are extending our partnership with Microsoft and with the support of other industry leaders, we are now poised to decode the immune response to COVID-19. To accelerate the development of improved detection methods and vaccine discovery, we will make this data freely available to any researcher, public health official, or organization around the world via an open data access portal.

Right now, the vast majority of current R&D efforts are focused on the RNA of the virus itself. We’re attacking this from a different angle. There is critical information held within the genetics of a patient’s immune response to the virus and the disease patterns we can infer from studying the immune response at the population level. Immune response data may help to solve two of the key challenges we are facing in the current diagnostic paradigm: detection of the virus in infected people who are not showing symptoms and improved triaging of newly diagnosed patients. Finding the relevant immune response signature may also advance solutions to treat and prevent the disease.

A pivotal part of this effort will be our own research study to collect de-identified blood samples from individuals diagnosed with or recovered from COVID-19. Industry partners are pitching in with critical services including LabCorp, Illumina, and Providence. Immune cell receptors from these blood samples will be sequenced and mapped to SARS-CoV-2 specific antigens that have been confirmed by our immune medicine platform to induce an immune response. The antigens and mapped immune receptor data will be uploaded to the open data access portal. The accuracy of the immune response signature will be continuously improved and updated online in real time as more blood samples are received and sequenced.

We anticipate that COVID-19 will, like the flu, become part of our lives going forward. Continually generating and providing these data will help advance solutions to diagnose, treat, and prevent the disease in the future.

We invite more collaborators to join us. Other institutions or collaborators interested in contributing blood samples can direct inquiries to COVID19ImmuneResponse@adaptivebiotech.com. Please pass this information along.

As this pandemic sweeps across our communities around the world, it has been inspiring to see how the healthcare, biotechnology and technology communities, among others, have banded together to expedite potential solutions to all aspects of the current situation. In the same way, it has been amazing to see this effort come together in a short period of time – within our team at Adaptive and across our partners’ organizations, people have mobilized and are collaborating in a way that I have never seen before. I have never been prouder to be a part of an industry and a community that can truly make a difference.

We are facing a pandemic that will only be solved with a global effort that includes our best and brightest thinkers, our boldest scientists and researchers, and our biggest humanitarians.

We look forward to collaborating and sharing data with all of you.

Stay safe.
Chad

I’ve had the unique position to view the Covid-19 outbreak in Seattle from two perspectives – as a long-time resident of the city, along with my wife and two teenage daughters, and as the CEO of a commercial-stage biotechnology company.

From both perspectives, I know that uncertainty and disruption can cause anxiety. We are moving quickly – at home and at work – to adjust to a new reality. More than ever before, we must be nimble, compassionate, vigilant, patient, and responsible with ourselves and others. Most importantly, we must be positive and find the silver linings that arise from this challenge: opportunities to strengthen relationships with family and friends, learn new things, and step up as leaders at work and in the community.

At home, my wife, Kristi, and I are adjusting to two teenage daughters being out of school, with online and app-based learning. We are exploring online exercise classes, taking family walks, and have dusted off games that haven’t seen the light in years. Of course, it’s a struggle to know where to draw the line on who, with and where the kids can hang out.

How can we remain focused at work? For those of us in medicine, there is no choice. To quote a colleague, “We are dealing with patients who are continuing to battle various cancers and they need us. Our doctors and customers are continuing to provide care and make their patients their top priority…our ability to get clonoSEQ to them remains important.” Adaptive has employees that need to be physically present: laboratory staff who process clinical tests and R&D teams who are advancing key discoveries about the adaptive immune system. I also plan to maintain a presence at the company to support my team, albeit within the zone guidelines that our response team has outlined.

I’ve been so impressed with the way my colleagues are handling this moment in time. Adapters are banding together, going above and beyond to do everything possible to move the business forward. We’ve assembled an exceptional cross-functional working group to ensure that we’re protecting all of our employees and maintaining uptime. People make the difference and we have the most dedicated people I have ever seen.

Adaptive is in a very healthy financial position, with significant cash reserves to weather this storm. We will be smart about how we deploy these resources and we will continue to build in areas that we can. We need to act with urgency to get our products developed and out to patients. And, we are working to understand the immune response to this pandemic and potential ways in which this information can advance new solutions. We have already identified key research partners and will soon be processing samples to determine what signal we can find. We will have more to share on this soon.

I want to assure you that this will pass, we will get through it, and we will come out stronger than ever. In fact, there’s never been a more important time to deliver on our promise to change medicine and serve patients.

Please stay healthy.