Aridis Pharmaceuticals CEO Vu Truong joined Steve Darling from Proactive to share news that its fully human monoclonal antibody cocktail AR-701 is reactive against the Omicron and other COVID-19 variants, SARS, MERS, and seasonal human coronaviruses.
Truong telling Proactive AR-703 binds to the 'S2' stalk region of coronavirus spike proteins that is responsible for viral fusion and entry into host cells, and binds to the Omicron variant with no loss in affinity as compared to the original Wuhan strain. Truong also told Proactive AR-701 is engineered to be long-acting, and is expected to provide relevant drug levels for up to 1 year from prophylactic or therapeutic treatment.