While the world is still reeling from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, Evotec will be investigating how to treat an infectious disease with a far longer and more deadly history.
The German biotech-CRO hybrid company has received almost $50 million from the U.S. government to develop monoclonal antibodies that target the bacterium Yersinia pestis—otherwise known as the bubonic plague.
The plague, or “black death,” killed many millions of people across Europe, the Middle East and Asia in three major waves of infection spanning 500 years. The final pandemic at the end of the 1800s spread across Asia and allowed science to identify the bacterium responsible and its transmission via fleas that were themselves transported around the world on black rats.
The disease is one of the targets of interest under the U.S. Department of Defense’s (DOD’s) Accelerated Antibodies Program. The department has inked a $49.9 million contract with Evotec’s Seattle-based biologics unit to take either new or existing monoclonal antibodies into phase 1 trials for bubonic plague.
Evotec will use its so-called J.DESIGN biologics platform to not only discover and optimize these antibodies but to develop and manufacture them at its Redmond, Washington, facility, the company said. It means the site will join the department’s DOD’s Advanced Development and Manufacturing network.
“The rapid, cost-efficient development of mAb product prototypes will yield an accelerated supply of safe and efficacious mAb medical counter measures for use against plague,” Evotec said in a Sept. 20 release.
“We are delighted to support the DOD with this work of strategic national importance, and which we feel represents a clear validation of both the efficiency and speed our leading science, technology and expertise offers our partners,” Evotec Chief Operating Officer Craig Johnstone said in the release.
It’s not the first time Evotec has been tapped by the department. Back in July 2020, the company was handed a contract worth up to $18.2 million to develop monoclonal antibodies for COVID-19.