Absci Corp. (Nasdaq: ABSI) announced Thursday it will collaborate with researchers at the California Institute of Technology to develop affordable HIV therapeutic vaccinations.
Caltech received a $1.17 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for the work it will do in partnership with Absci, a Vancouver-based AI drug creation company.
The research brings together “cutting-edge research capabilities and advanced technological expertise in structural biology and immunology, protein design, synthetic biology and generative AI,” Absci said in its announcement.
The work will be led by Dr. Pamela Bjorkman, a professor at Caltech who specializes in immune recognition of viral pathogens.
There is no cure or vaccine for HIV, though antiretroviral therapies have extended people’s lives. Absci and Caltech hope to focus on making a therapeutic vaccine that is both accessible and scalable.
Absci can screen billions of cells per week, using AI to create antibodies and a wet lab to validate them in as few as six weeks.
Earlier this year, Absci announced it had used “zero-shot” generative AI to create new antibodies on a computer, a process that has the potential to dramatically reduce the time it takes to get a novel drug into the clinic. It also opened an outpost in Zug, Switzerland, a leading European biotech hub.
Shares of Absci fell to $1.73 Wednesday. In May, the company reported a quarterly loss of $0.26 per share, down from $0.33 a year earlier.
