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La Jolla Institute Gets $6.4M for COVID Research

The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, one of the National Institutes of Health, has awarded more than $6.4 million to Erica Ollmann Saphire, Ph.D., a professor at the La Jolla Institute for Immunology, to support research toward COVID-19 antibody therapeutics. The local organization announced the award on Aug. 20.

The Coronavirus Immunotherapeutic Consortium (CoVIC) at the La Jolla Institute is now partnered with the federal agency to provide independent evaluation of antibody therapeutics as part of the federal government’s Operation Warp Speed. The funding to LJI will fuel ongoing efforts by CoVIC, led by Saphire, to analyze virus-fighting antibodies and track how the novel coronavirus may attempt to escape those antibodies.

The Other Half

“Most COVID-19 antibody discovery efforts focus on one half of antibody molecules — the part that anchors to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19,” Saphire said. “This funding allows us to collect information about the other half of the antibody — the part that signals to the rest of the immune system the presence of the virus.

“New data suggest that the ability of that half to signal for immune help separates survivable cases from fatal cases of viral infection. By considering both halves of the antibody, we can gain a more complete picture of how antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 work best, and we can better choose the ones that will be most effective as therapeutics.”

CoVIC was established in March through funding from the COVID-19 Therapeutics Accelerator, a partnership between the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Wellcome and the Mastercard Impact Fund. Through CoVIC, Saphire’s lab is fielding promising therapeutic antibody candidates against COVID-19 for side-by-side, apples-to-apples comparisons of antibody function.

Having demonstrated the success of this model from 2014-2019 to test antibodies against the Ebola virus, Saphire launched CoVIC to examine the activity of hundreds of antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 contributed by a range of large and small companies and academic labs across multiple continents.

As part of CoVIC analyses, Saphire’s team uses LJI’s powerful pair of Titan electron microscopes for high-resolution analysis of how the antibodies interact with proteins of SARS-CoV-2.

$1M Private Gift

Separately, the institute received a $1 million gift from the GHR Foundation, an independent philanthropy based in Minneapolis, to support the work of CoVIC. The GHR Foundation takes its name from Gerald and Henrietta Rauenhorst, founders of the Opus Group. Based in Minnesota, the group is a real estate development, construction and design firm.

The La Jolla Institute said that private philanthropy has been key to its ability to respond quickly to the pandemic. 

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