GigaGen's COVID-19 drug '100-fold more potent than convalescent serum'

US biotech GigaGen has announced the publication of research describing a new class of drugs, recombinant hyperimmunes, including its COVID-19 therapy, GIGA-2050.

The Californian company’s study explains that GIGA-2050 is like a recombinant convalescent serum, enabling production of millions of doses of drug from a few donors.

Convalescent serum therapies have been touted as a unique and viable way to address the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. These therapies are powerful in that they comprise tens of thousands of antibodies and therefore have polyvalent activity against multiple drug targets and epitopes, which may improve clinical efficacy, while leveraging in vivo affinity maturation of antibodies in donors' immune systems.