Harbour BioMed, Utrecht University, Erasmus Medical Center, Viroclinics-DDL and Kiadis Pharma Announce Collaboration to Develop Monoclonal Antibody, Natural Killer Cell Combination Approach to Treating COVID-19

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. and ROTTERDAM, Netherlands and SUZHOU, China, Aug. 19, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Harbour BioMed (HBM), and its partners Utrecht University and Erasmus Medical Center, today announced a new research collaboration with Viroclinics-DDL and Kiadis Pharma (Euronext Amsterdam and Brussels: KDS) that will focus on the development of a combination of a monoclonal antibody (mAb) and Natural Killer (NK) cells as a treatment for COVID-19. This new collaboration expands the company's ongoing work in using mAb's against SARS-CoV-2. The terms for this collaboration were not disclosed.

The collaboration capitalized on the demonstrated anti-SARS-CoV-2 activity in early studies alongside Kiadis' K-NK cell therapy platform. COVID-19 has been shown to break down NK cell immunity, and severe COVID-19 patients lack functional NK cells. The fully human, non-blocking antibody 49F1 targets a conserved region of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein and has shown strong binding affinity to both SARS-CoV-2 and a second coronavirus SARS-CoV in vitro. The collaboration will study the elimination of SARS-CoV-2 virus and virally infected cells by K-NK cells, and synergies between mAb's and NK cells.

NK cells are the human immune system's first line of defense against tumor cells and infectious disease. K-NK-ID101 cells potentially have enhanced anti-viral activity, while avoiding exacerbating needless inflammation, and therefore may be uniquely suited to repair this lack of functional NK cells. Since K-NK-ID101 cells can be manufactured at large scale and frozen down, they can be immediately and globally made available to patients.

"This innovative collaboration with Kiadis allows us to explore potential synergies between the innate and adaptive immunity," said Dr Jingsong Wang, Founder, Chairman & Chief Executive Officer of HBM. "It further underscores the multi-pronged approaches HBM and our partners are taking to address the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic using Harbour Mice^® platforms and other next-generation technologies to accelerate the development of novel human antibodies," he added.  

About Harbour BioMed

Harbour BioMed is a global, clinical stage biopharmaceutical company developing innovative therapeutics in the fields of immuno-oncology, immunologic diseases, and COVID-19. The company is building its proprietary pipeline through internal R&D programs, collaborations with co-discovery and co-development partners and select acquisitions.

The company's internal discovery programs are centered around its two patented transgenic mouse platforms (Harbour Mice^®) for generating both fully human monoclonal antibodies, heavy chain only antibodies (HCAb) and HBICE™ immune cell engager technology for developing bispecific antibodies. Harbour BioMed also licenses the platforms to companies and academic institutions.  The company has operations in Cambridge, Massachusetts; Rotterdam, The Netherlands; and Suzhou & Shanghai, China. For more information, please visit www.harbourbiomed.com

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