BRIEF—Lumen gets more federal funding to advance COVID-19 antibody

Privately-held US biotech Lumen Bioscience today announced new development funding from the US Army for its COVID-19 monoclonal antibody drug cocktail.

The support is provided by the US Army Medical Research and Development Command, operating through the Medical Technology Enterprise Consortium.

This announcement builds on a previous Army grant to Lumen that funded pre-clinical development of LMN-301, an investigational product directed at treating and preventing the gastrointestinal manifestations of COVID-19.

These symptoms are an important aspect of the disease but have received less attention than the respiratory and immunological aspects due to the lack of scalable technologies for treating such infections.

Lumen’s spirulina-based GMP manufacturing and delivery technology is uniquely suited for such applications, the company claims.