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Swiftscale is developing a vaccine to Shigella bacteria which is a leading cause of diarrhea and a neutralizing antibody that can serve as a treatment for COVID-19. Neutralizing antibodies treat infectious diseases by binding to viral or bacterial protein, blocking their interaction with host cells.
Swiftscale Biologics has a cell-free platform that take a synthetic biology approach to enzymatically modify complex proteins. The modified proteins closely resemble those found naturally in humans. Swiftscale is using this technology to develop antibody therapeutics. The company has a process that allows the development of therapies in a month, whereas traditional methods to develop antibodies using cell culture, can take more than a year. For antibody therapy development, Swiftscale Biologics uses their cell-free biology and fast-growing cells, which produce tens of thousands of pinprick-sized samples and their variable conditions are precisely measured. Drug performance is computationally predicted based on past data to reduce cycle times. These methods allow Swiftscale to find the optimal conditions for antibody growth in less time.
David Mace, CEO, was previously an Entrepreneur in Residence at 8VC, where he focused on the intersection of biology and computer science. He graduated from the California Institute of Technology. Michael Jewett, CTO, is the Director of the Center for Synthetic Biology at Northwestern University and the Walter P. Murphy Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering at Northwestern University. Matthew Delisa, CSO, is the William L. Lewis Professor at Cornell University's Smith School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and Director of Cornell University's Institute of Biotechnology.
Swiftscale is aims to develop and test a curative antibody therapy for COVID-19 that would work similar to the antibodies found in people that have recovered from the virus. The company believes it can reach mass production scale before summer 2020. Towards this end the company aims to bring in people to work on manufacturing, pharmaceutical business development and clinical trial design. Swiftscale plans to partner with contract manufacturing organizations (CMOs).
