On Jun. 1, 2020, Anixa Biosciences and OntoChem announced that the Company, together with partner OntoChem GmbH, has synthesized four potential Covid-19 compounds that will advance to biological assay testing.  Anixa and OntoChem announced their partnership on April 20, 2020 and announced discovery of its first potential Covid-19 candidate two weeks later on May 4, 2020.

The initial phase of this program was designed to screen approximately 1.2 billion chemical compounds, utilizing in silico methods, against two specific enzymes of SARS-CoV-2.  As the computer-based screening identified potential compounds, they would be synthesized and tested in biological assays to evaluate their potency as predicted by the molecular modeling algorithms.  Should the biological activity be verified, the compounds will be tested in animal studies to further evaluate their candidacy as Covid-19 therapeutics.  Assuming animal studies are successful, the compound or compounds can be readied for human testing.

Anixa is a publicly-traded biotechnology company developing a number of programs addressing cancer and infectious disease. Anixa’s therapeutic portfolio includes a cancer vaccine technology focused on the immunization against α-Lactalbumin to prevent triple negative breast cancer (TNBC), a cancer immunotherapy program which uses a novel type of CAR-T, known as chimeric endocrine receptor T-cell (CER-T) technology, and a Covid-19 therapeutics program focused on inhibiting certain viral protein function. The company’s diagnostic portfolio consists of Cchek™, a liquid biopsy technology for early detection of solid tumors based on the body’s immune response to the presence of a malignancy.