On Aug. 24, 2020, XBiotech announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued an emergency use authorization (EUA) for COVID-19 Convalescent Plasma (CCP) as a COVID-19 treatment, opening the door for XBiotech’s antibody screening technology used to identify CCP.  XBiotech collaborated with BioBridge Global to develop a test to accurately detect human antibodies present in patient blood that specifically attack the COVID-19 virus.

BioBridge Global, which provides blood products to hospitals through its subsidiary, the South Texas Blood & Tissue Center, is using XBiotech’s test to identify human bloods from patients that have recovered from COVID-19 – so called convalescent plasma.

While XBiotech’s testing technology was to be used as the first step in the production of anti-COVID-19 convalescent blood products, XBiotech also used the convalescent blood samples supplied by BioBridge to identify the precise genetic information present in individuals producing these natural antibodies against COVID-19. The Company announced it had in fact successfully discovered candidate True Human therapeutic antibodies based on this effort.