NEW YORK – In late January, James Crowe, an antibody researcher at Vanderbilt University, was gearing up for a test run to develop potential antibody treatments for a virus outbreak.
The goal: do it in just sixty days, a mark set by set by a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) program that has funded Crowe and three other labs around the country.
Crowe's lab had come close in a test scenario last year, where they were able to generate antibodies against Zika virus and show they were effective and safe in primates in just 78 days.