Thank you to Ian Haydon for additional research and reporting in this article. ![]() Subscribe to my weekly newsletters in synthetic biology. We look forward to reporting progress on all fronts.”įollow me on Twitter at and synbiobeta. “Our biopharma division has identified many antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 - both to the virus itself and to the receptor on human cells that grant its entry. “We continue to serve our customers who are developing therapeutics, vaccines, and diagnostics through our primary products,” she tells me. And now more than ever, she says synthetic biology needs to deliver. Firing on all cylindersĭespite the pandemic, Leproust remains a dedicated entrepreneur. Twist uses its unique antibody workflow to identify which of these antibodies have the greatest potential as treatment to broadly protect other people who may become infected with the virus. VUMC has supplied Twist Biopharma with a large number of antibody sequences from a patient who had recovered from COVID-19. The project already has around 500 teams all working on different aspects of Covid testing, aimed at getting people back to school and work safely.Īnd Twist has partnered with Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) to reduce the time it takes to go from outbreak to clinic-ready treatment in 60 days, versus the standard timeline of one to two years. TMOc, and lab automation upstart Opentrons. Twist is a supporting partner alongside such notables as Google GOOGL, Amazon AMZN, Illumina ILMN, Thermo Fisher Scientifi Twist also is part of the $5 million XPRIZE Rapid Covid Testing competition to accelerate the development of high-quality Covid-19 testing that is low cost, easy to use, and fast-turnaround, enabling frequent testing. The panel can detect among SARS-CoV-2, several other coronaviruses, influenzas, rhinoviruses and respiratory syncytial virus. This will be important for doctors to be able to distinguish between Covid-19 and other seasonal viruses. These include the tools needed to make diagnostic tests for Covid and coronavirus, reference standards that are important for making sure coronavirus tests are accurate, and tools for creating both vaccines and treatments.įor the coming flu season, Twist recently launched an all-in-one respiratory panel to help health workers differentiate among different respiratory diseases. Twist has put its antibody expertise to work in a comprehensive way, making several new research products available to the community. “Having built my workflow from the ground up based on Twist custom DNA products, the Twist Biopharma workflow is not DNA-constrained and is only limited by our capacity to test antibodies, which is a good problem to have.” A comprehensive approach to the pandemic “From my perspective, DNA synthesis has always been a bottleneck -until I joined Twist,” says Sato. Through its commercial partnerships, Twist Biopharma, a division within Twist Bioscience, is making new antibodies with custom properties easier to create. And Twist can make unprecedented synthetic gene libraries, which are a fantastic tool for antibody discovery,” says Sato. Basically, this allows us to make a lot of antibody clones as part of a workflow. ![]() “Twist can make hundreds of thousands of different genes quickly. The key, however, is creating the right antibodies at scale. Instead of waiting days for results, a rapid antibody test could deliver answers in minutes. ![]() Such tests, if developed, would finally allow the U.S. “The right antibody pair could be included in a test to determine is a person has Covid-19 or not,” says Sato. But antibodies can also play a diagnostic role. As therapeutics, they can be used to either to treat infection directly or to mitigate some of its worst symptoms. There are many uses for antibodies during a pandemic, Sato tells me.
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