Celltrion "Developing Antibody Treatment for South Africa Variant... Clinical Trials to Complete Within 6 Months"

Confirmed Effects of UK Variant... Development of Customized Treatments Combining Regkirona

[Image source=Yonhap News]

[Asia Economy Reporter Seo So-jung] Celltrion is embarking on the development of customized antibody treatments capable of responding to variant viruses such as those from South Africa.

Celltrion announced on the 11th that its COVID-19 antibody treatment 'Rekkirona,' which recently received conditional product approval from the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety, was confirmed to be effective against the UK variant but showed reduced efficacy against the South African variant. Accordingly, the company has begun developing customized antibody treatments to address future emerging variant viruses.

The Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency's National Institute of Health recently conducted neutralization tests of Rekkirona by mixing antibodies with the UK and South African variants and infecting host cells to assess the extent to which the antibodies inhibit the virus.

In this test, Rekkirona demonstrated strong neutralizing ability against the UK variant but showed decreased neutralization against the South African variant.

From the early stages of Rekkirona's development, Celltrion recognized the importance of responding to viral mutations and, while developing Rekkirona targeting the dominant virus strain, secured a potential cocktail candidate antibody pool consisting of 38 neutralizing antibodies.

Among these, candidate antibody number 32 showed neutralizing ability against both the UK and South African variants in the recent KDCA test, and the company confirmed its neutralizing ability in cocktail therapy tests combined with Rekkirona.

Since Rekkirona has been confirmed to have neutralizing ability against the UK variant virus, Celltrion plans to continue supplying Rekkirona as its main product while developing a new variant-customized cocktail treatment using candidate antibody number 32, aiming to complete clinical trials within the next six months.

The company intends to expedite the development and clinical process to complete it before the South African variant continues to spread and establishes itself as a new dominant virus strain.

In particular, as the technology of polymerase chain reaction (PCR) diagnostic kits has advanced to a level capable of detecting variant viruses, Celltrion believes it can actively utilize this to select suitable antibodies on its own platform and respond promptly to additional emerging variants.

Kwon Ki-sung, Head of Research and Development at Celltrion, stated, "We have confirmed that Rekkirona has strong neutralizing ability against the UK variant. In addition to Rekkirona, we will swiftly complete the development of customized cocktail antibody treatments that can actively respond to various variants."