What does the coronavirus mean for MTx?
We’re working on corona since February. It is evident that our technology is well suited to identify the most powerful antibodies against the coronavirus. Our goal is to rapidly develop an antibody used as therapeutic treatment against this disease.

MTx was founded in 2015, long before the coronavirus appeared. How come that your technology is well suited to combat a virus that is so recent?
The technology isn’t specifically designed for one virus or another. It is a platform technology that can be used to isolate superb antibodies against viral and other diseases. But as a startup, we need to focus and do things step by step.

Countless companies are working on a vaccine against corona now. Why do you think MTx stands a chance against this competition?
We’ve already demonstrated how powerful our platform is with the BK virus. We were able to identify a highly neutralizing antibody against the virus and even beat a large Swiss pharma company by a 100 times. Regarding the coronavirus, it is true that many companies are now designing antibodies that lock on to the virus. That’s not very difficult, in fact. The true difficulty lies in identifying an antibody that doesn’t just bind to the virus, but is also effective against it and e.g., blocks it from entering human cells infecting them. Here at MTx, we use the system that knows best how to design a cure against viruses: the human immune system. And from that, we identify the best result and use it.

How does that work?
In the fight against a virus, the B cells in the body produce antibodies. Most of them aren’t effective, but some are. These are the ones that you want to identify. The problem that arises when you work with B cells is that they’re very fragile. Our competition can’t really work on a large scale with them because of this. But we are able to copy the information that is stored in these cells and stabilize it. We can extract the whole array of antibodies in a patient and make it searchable, which allows identifying the antibodies that are most effective.

How does this work look like? I imagine someone in a white coat mixing stuff in a test tube.
We take a blood sample from a patient and isolate the B cells first. Then we put them, not in a test tube, but in very small nano-droplets, which are in fact so small that only a few cells fit into each. This is the core of our technology and is based on microfluidic principles. In these nano-droplets, we produce on a single cell basis a copy from each B cell in a robust producer cell. After that, our droplet sorter allows us to rapidly identify the antibodies which are reacting with a virus-like particle resembling the natural virus. In fact, we’re not working with the virus in the lab, because it is highly contagious. With that, we can extract the ultra-rare but highly effective antibodies that the immune system produces.

And did you find that some patients are better at producing the most effective antibodies against the coronavirus, as was the case with the BK virus you worked on previously?
It’s too early to tell. We assume that it is the case. The more patients we can work with, the better.

But you surely don’t want people who are contagious showing up at your lab.
No. But people who were infected and have recovered and are out of quarantine, we’re extremely interested in. The problem is that in Switzerland, there aren’t many recovered cases yet.

You said you want to develop a treatment against the coronavirus rapidly. What does rapidly in this context mean?
I’m sure that if we can find a very effective antibody and present data confirming this, the authorities will do their best to speed up the process. But clinical trials take time. We’re talking about a time frame of several years here.