Active Motif Announces New Report Describing Advancements in Generation and Characterization of Their Recombinant Human COVID-19 Antibodies with Qualities that Make Them Ideal for Use in Diagnostics and Therapeutics

For Immediate Release—Carlsbad, CA—June 15, 2020.


Active Motif, a company with the vision of bringing the field of epigenetics into personalized medicine, announces access to a pre-print publication associated with their COVID-19 efforts in China to isolate, develop, and deliver high-value fully human recombinant SARS-CoV-2 antibodies to the market.

On April 13, 2020, the company announced that several of these antibodies with neutralizing properties were selected by Hisun Biopharma for potential use as a treatment for severe cases of COVID-19 infections. The antibodies are also being sourced by diagnostic developers for various applications such as lateral flow and ELISA-based assays, as well as for use as a capture antibody, as sandwich pairs, and as controls.

The pre-print manuscript describes how more than 1,000 memory B cells specific to SARS-CoV-2 were isolated from 11 convalescent patients from the Wuhan Province of China. Active Motif's proprietary sorting method known as AbEpic was leveraged to isolate the antibodies and characterization of the clones was performed through the use of proteins, pseudovirus, and live virus.

This process identified 178 recombinant monoclonal antibodies that tested positive for antigen binding and 17 strong binders to SARS-CoV-2 spike S1 protein or the receptor-binding domain (RBD) were identified with Kd (EC50) below 1 nM. The details of this effort are described in depth in the pre-print manuscript.

Dr. Fei Lan, a lead research investigator and author of the manuscript stated, "Active Motif effectively partnered and collaborated with the University of Fudan and its Public Health Clinical Center to turn this into a reality."

Active Motif North America has taken the lead on the scale-up, manufacturing, and commercialization of over 19 clones which have been demonstrated to show value in both diagnostic as well as therapeutic applications. "We are proud of the effort made by the many employees at Active Motif who have taken the extra effort required to provide access to these antibodies and it is a great feeling to know that we can assist in making an impact on this pandemic," noted Ted DeFrank, President and CEO of Active Motif.

The manuscript in its pre-print version can be accessed through the bioRxiv website or the following link: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.19.104117v2

For more information, please contact Ted DeFrank ([email protected]).


About Active Motif

Active Motif, Inc. is dedicated to developing, manufacturing and delivering epigenetics-based research tools to analyze nuclear function. Its customers include life scientists from academic and government institutions, biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies, hospitals, and reference laboratories. Active Motif operates globally through its corporate headquarters in Carlsbad, California, and offices in Shanghai China, Tokyo Japan, and La Hulpe Belgium. Active Motif applies a multi-disciplinary approach to create new and modifies existing technologies to meet the current and future needs of life science researchers.