COVID-19 mAb menagerie

The COVID-19 crisis is mobilizing researchers to crank out therapeutic mAbs from a wide array of patient- and animal-based platforms, with the virus’ spike protein emerging as the consensus target antigen. But the hold-up for access to COVID-19 patient samples means some players’ most promising programs are waiting in the wings.

The speedy publication by Chinese scientists of the genomic sequence of SARS-CoV-2, the virus behind COVID-19, made it possible for companies to get a running start developing vaccines and therapeutics against the disease (see “The Race is On”)...