RQ Bio partners with AstraZeneca in Covid antibody fight

UK biotech RQ Bio is partnering with AstraZeneca as it races to keep its antibody to protect immunocompromised patients from Covid-19 up to date with the latest variants.

The Anglo-Swedish pharmaceutical company recently launched a trial of a second generation of its Evusheld antibody, as the original appears unable to prevent infection from the XBB 1.5 variant.

Evusheld 2.0 combines a new antibody developed by RQ Bio, acquired as part of a deal worth about $157mn, with one of the original antibodies. The antibodies are used to protect people who do not respond to vaccines, for example, if they have certain cancers.

Iskra Reic, executive vice-president of vaccine and immune therapies at AstraZeneca, said she hoped the new antibody would be ready by the second half of this year, using techniques pioneered during the vaccine development to speed up the process.

“We are working at a pace to execute on clinical trials and in parallel discussing with regulators,” she said. “There is urgency because the unmet need is now.” 

Eventually, regulators may allow drugmakers to use “bridging” studies, as they do for flu vaccines, to adapt to new variants without launching large-scale phase-three trials each time.

RQ Bio was started in 2020 as a scientific side hustle, led by researchers from Imperial, Oxford and the biotech sector, as part of the UK BioIndustry Association’s antibody task force.

RQ stands for “Red Queen”, an evolutionary theory that we must constantly adapt in the face of threats, named after the character in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass, who said: “It takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place”.

Jane Osbourn, chief scientific officer at another biotech, Alchemab Therapeutics, was one of the scientists giving up their evenings and weekends to hunt for a Covid-19 antibody. She said it was a “great lovely collaborative piece of work”, to give people “as many options as possible”. 

However, the UK government lost interest in funding antibody development and the scientists’ original antibody failed to work against the Delta variant. While Evusheld has been sold around the world, the UK government has not bought the product, despite protests from patient groups.

The project was saved by a convertible loan from LifeArc, a medical research charity, based on a royalty stream from the blockbuster cancer drug Keytruda.

Clare Terlouw, head of LifeArc ventures and a member of RQ Bio’s board, said given the amount of money being spent on Covid-19 at the time, it was a shame there was not government funding for antibody development.

“I remember thinking that is something we have to be able to do something about. To have that sort of innovation, with these amazing people, and not to be able to progress in the UK doesn’t make any sense to me,” she said.

Hugo Fry, a former Sanofi executive who became RQ’s chief executive, is planning to expand the company’s portfolio to include antibodies to address flu, the respiratory syncytial virus and cytomegalovirus, which can cause problems for newborn babies.

“We need to move from thinking about vaccination to immunisation, to protect more of the population,” he said. “This is a really good model because we suddenly boosted the economy, freed up money from AstraZeneca and invested in employing people . . . if we can bottle this and do it across UK plc it would be amazing.”