With mul­ti­ple re­pur­posed Covid-19 treat­ments al­ready in the clin­ic (and one that flunked out), Ab­b­Vie is plac­ing its next bet on some­thing new: an ex­per­i­men­tal an­ti­body it spent the last sev­er­al months de­vel­op­ing with Har­bour Bio­Med, the Nether­lands’ Utrecht Uni­ver­si­ty and Eras­mus Med­ical Cen­ter.

Ab­b­Vie joined the an­ti­body hunt back in June, with its sights set on Har­bour’s 47D11. The Illi­nois-based phar­ma is now putting down a one-time li­cense fee for world­wide de­vel­op­ment and com­mer­cial­iza­tion rights to the an­ti­body, which it says shows promise in not on­ly SARS-CoV-2, but al­so re­lat­ed mu­ta­tions of the virus and SARS-CoV-1. It dosed the first pa­tient in a 24-per­son Phase I tri­al just last week.

Har­bour and Utrecht are keep­ing qui­et about the terms of the li­cens­ing deal, ex­cept to note that they’ll re­ceive cer­tain mile­stone pay­ments and tiered roy­al­ties on net sales. Eras­mus wasn’t in­volved in the deal.

47D11 was dis­cov­ered last year us­ing the Har­bour Mice plat­form, and was orig­i­nal­ly in de­vel­op­ment for SARS-CoV-1. Then the pan­dem­ic struck, and Har­bour CEO Jing­song Wang said the com­pa­nies re­al­ized its po­ten­tial for SARS-CoV-2. It tar­gets a con­served re­gion of the SARS-CoV-2 spike pro­tein, and Wang said there’s a pos­si­bil­i­ty it could be used to treat oth­er coro­n­avirus­es as well.

“Of course, we’ll need fur­ther val­i­da­tion,” he added.

The study will test the an­ti­body in three dif­fer­ent dos­es at test sites across the US, with safe­ty as the pri­ma­ry end­point. Har­bour said they ex­pect the tri­al to wrap up around May.

Al­though Ab­b­Vie didn’t have much pri­or ex­pe­ri­ence in de­vel­op­ing an­ti­bod­ies for virus­es, much of their oth­er work cen­ters on an­ti­bod­ies, like the TNF-block­ing an­ti­body Hu­mi­ra.

Ab­b­Vie’s ceni­crivi­roc — which has shown to be un­der­whelm­ing as a NASH treat­ment — was se­lect­ed by the NIH in Oc­to­ber for a new AC­TIV-1 Im­mune Mod­u­la­tors adap­tive study, in an ef­fort to find new ways to stave off the cy­tokine storms that kill some pa­tients. Its IL-23 drug with Boehringer In­gel­heim was al­so cho­sen for an NIH study for Covid-19.

An­oth­er of the com­pa­ny’s ef­forts to fight the pan­dem­ic proved un­suc­cess­ful back in June, when UK RE­COV­ERY tri­al in­ves­ti­ga­tors con­clud­ed that the HIV an­tivi­ral Kale­tra was in­ef­fec­tive against Covid-19. For 1,596 pa­tients giv­en the drug, the 28-day mor­tal­i­ty rate was 22.1%, com­pared to 21.3% for the 3,376 who re­ceived stan­dard care.

Go­ing forth, AB­BV-47D11 may al­so be test­ed as a pre­ven­ta­tive ther­a­py. “That is some­thing that is be­ing re­viewed and dis­cussed in­ter­nal­ly at this point,” Har­bour chief strat­e­gy of­fi­cer and head of US op­er­a­tions At­ul Desh­pande said.

“We’re re­al­ly ex­cit­ed to con­tribute to the on­go­ing pan­dem­ic in face of all the chal­lenges that all of us glob­al­ly are fac­ing,” Wang said.

The Endpoints News team is continuing to track IPO filings for 2021, and we’ve designed a new tracker page for the effort.

Check it out here: Biopharma IPOs 2021 from Endpoints News

You’ll be able to find all the biotechs that have filed and priced so far this year, sortable by quarter and listed by newest first. As of the time of publishing on Feb. 25, there have already been 16 biotechs debuting on Nasdaq so far this year, with an additional four having filed their S-1 paperwork.

In the search for a better Covid-19 therapeutic, GlaxoSmithKline and Vir have partnered up on two antibodies they hope have a chance. GSK is also testing its own in-house antibody, and early results may have shut the door on its widespread use.

A combination of GSK’s monoclonal antibody otilimab plus standard of care couldn’t best standard of care alone in preventing death and respiratory failure in hospitalized Covid-19 patients after 28 days, according to data from the Phase IIa OSCAR study unveiled Thursday.

S&P Global has taken a look at the dominant forces shaping the pharma market and come to the conclusion that there will be more downgrades than upgrades in 2021 — the 8th straight year of steady decline.

But it’s not all bad news. Some things are looking up, and there’s still plenty of money to be made in an industry that enjoys a 30% to 40% profit margin, once you factor in steep R&D expenses.