AbCellera,  a 2013 New Ventures BC Competition finalist, has been named to Fast Company’s prestigious list of the  World’s Most Innovative Companies for 2020. The list honours the businesses making the most profound impact on both industry and society.  AbCellera’s drug discovery platform searches and analyzes natural immune systems to deliver best-in-class antibody drugs, and currently it’s being used to respond to the COVID-19 outbreak. They’re leading a team of industry expert in  the Pandemic Prevention Platform program and working on discovering neutralizing antibodies that could ultimately be deployed to stop the transmission of the coronavirus.

On March 12, AbCellera and Eli Lilly and Company announced they have entered into an agreement to co-develop antibody products for the treatment and prevention of COVID-19, the disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 novel coronavirus. 

Within one week of receiving a blood sample from one of the first U.S. patients who recovered from COVID-19, AbCellera screened over 5 million immune cells looking for ones that produced functional antibodies that helped the patient neutralize the virus and recover from the disease. From this effort, AbCellera has identified over 500 unique fully human antibody sequences, the largest panel of anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibodies ever reported. The next step is to screen these antibodies to find the ones most effective in neutralizing SARS-CoV-2. Many of these antibodies will be expressed in collaboration with partners at the Vaccine Research Center (VRC) at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, and pending agreement with NIAID will be tested for their ability to neutralize the virus.

 

Content in this article is inspired by a feature on Innovate BC platform and AbCellera online news. 

INNOWWIDE Call for Projects – Deadline March 31st

Are you an innovative Italian SME with the ambition to develop a new and innovative product-market combination (or process or service) with a strategic counterpart outside Europe? Do you need to first check the technical, commercial, legal and socio-economic feasibility?

 

The Italian Chamber of Commerce in Canada West is currently looking for Italian Innovative startups and SMEs to partner up in the call for proposals Innowide www.innowwide.eu (deadline for applications March 31st 2020).

INNOWWIDE – Viability assessment of collaborative and INNOvative business solutions in WorldWIDE markets, is a Horizon 2020 project that aims to fund at least 120 European innovative SMEs and start-ups to conduct Viability Assessment Projects (VAPs) in markets outside of Europe.

Each approved VAP will receive a fixed grant amount of €60,000, representing a maximum of 70% of total eligible costs (staff, consumables, equipment, subcontracting, others) which must be a minimum of €86,000. 50% will be disbursed at the beginning.

Viability Assessment Projects (VAPs) are a comprehensive and coherent set of preliminary technical, market, legal and socioeconomic assessments intended to validate the viability of international, innovative businesses solutions.

If you:

  • Are an innovative European startup or SME operating in ANY SECTOR;
  • Are looking at Canada as a potential market;
  • Save 70% of your budget for extra-European business development.

 

[icons size=” custom_size=” icon=’fa-hand-o-right’ type=’normal’ position=” border=’yes’ border_color=” icon_color=” background_color=” margin=” icon_animation=” icon_animation_delay=” link=” target=’_self’] Contact us today at ilaria@iccbc.com  to collaborate on a proposal together.

 

Resources

For more information please refer to the below documents.

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