ImmunoPrecise Antibodies (IPA) shares realized a 123% gain this week when the company announced positive news on their Polytope TATX-03 Antibody cocktail. The company provides full-service, therapeutic antibody discovery company offering species agnostic advancements.
Why did IPA stock go up?
The company announced new results from its TATX-03 PolyTope™ Therapy, a four monoclonal antibody cocktail developed for the potential prevention and treatment of SARS-CoV-2, demonstrating potent pseudovirus neutralizing activity against the SARS-CoV-2 Delta (B.1.617.2) variant.
The Company anticipated viral evolution leading to novel SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern throughout the design of their PolyTope SARS-CoV-2 therapeutic cocktail, aiming to minimize the risk of mutagenic escape (a reduction or elimination in the efficacy of a therapy or vaccine by virus mutation).
As such, the Company continuously validates, and has demonstrated to date, maintained neutralization potency of IPA’s multi-antibody cocktail towards SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern. IPA previously announced that TATX-03 demonstrated strong efficacy in reducing viral load in vivo using a hamster challenge model and potently neutralized pseudovirus of Alpha (B.1.1.7) and Beta (B.1.351) variants in vitro.
Additional evaluation of virus neutralization potency in an in vitro pseudovirus-based assay revealed that IPA’s TATX-03 anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibody cocktail is also not affected by the rapidly spreading Delta variant (B.1.617.2). Parallel reactivity screening of the individual antibodies of TATX-03 revealed differential susceptibility of the lead components towards the Delta (B.1.617.1) variant with the majority showing maintained binding.
These results are consistent with previously announced binding data towards other SARS-CoV-2 mutants, including variants of concern Alpha (B.1.1.7), Beta (B.1.351) and Gamma (P.1) variants. These binding data, combined with the maintained neutralization potency of IPA’s TATX-03 to variants of concern, supports the Company’s expectation that rationally designed multi-membered antibody cocktails are more sustainable, e.g. will be functionally less prone to escape-by-one mutations.
