On Mar. 31, 2020, Sorrento announced it had entered into a research testing agreement with The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston for the preclinical testing of Sorrento’s COVID-19 therapeutic product candidates. The work will be performed at the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB), one of only two maximum containment laboratories on a university campus in the U.S. and one of just a few such Biosafety Level 4 (BSL4) laboratories currently operating in the U.S.