Atreca, a privately held biopharmaceutical company based in San Carlos, Calif., has formed a collaboration with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to accelerate the discovery and development of novel vaccines and therapeutics for human infectious diseases.

"We are grateful to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for its vision," said Tito A. Serafini, CEO, CSO and co-founder of Atreca. "This commitment from the foundation provides Atreca an opportunity to apply the company's Immune Repertoire Capture technology to meet key challenges in global health."

The foundation's investment establishes a long-term collaboration between the parties.  Atreca will apply its Immune Repertoire Capture technology in a particular set of infectious diseases and other conditions, and the company will share with the foundation the results for use in the discovery and development of vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics to be deployed in a defined group of countries. In the first four years, the partnership will focus on at least three diseases identified: malaria, HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis.

Immune Repertoire Capture technology leverages next-generation sequencing to identify rapidly and comprehensively the set of functional antibodies produced in patients during an immune response. These antibodies both have utility themselves and can be employed to identify the targets of an immune response. Applied to human disease, Immune Repertoire Capture is an engine for the discovery and development of antibody-based therapeutics, vaccines, diagnostics and research reagents. 

Atreca recently licensed exclusive rights to the technology for all fields of use from Stanford University.