Eli Lil­ly teams with an­ti­body up­start Ab­Cellera in coro­n­avirus hunt

As the Covid-19 out­break reach­es of­fi­cial pan­dem­ic lev­els and be­gins to dis­rupt US life in un­prece­dent­ed ways, Eli Lil­ly is join­ing the hunt for a drug that can treat the in­fec­tion.

The lega­cy phar­ma — not typ­i­cal­ly known for a rapid R&D en­gine — is team­ing with a small but well-con­nect­ed an­ti­body start­up out of British Co­lum­bia called Ab­Cellera. Ab­Cellera said they had al­ready iso­lat­ed a lit­tle over 500 po­ten­tial­ly ther­a­peu­tic an­ti­bod­ies from the blood of one of the US pa­tients who re­cov­ered from the virus and will work with Eli Lil­ly on test­ing those and turn­ing the best ones in­to a drug. The NIH and the Vac­cine Re­search Cen­ters will al­low pro­vide sup­port.

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