Adimab Signs Separate Antibody Discovery Deals with Biogen Idec and Novo Nordisk

Antibody discovery specialist Adimab announced signing separate collaborations with Biogen Idec and with Novo Nordisk. The partnerships will exploit Adimab’s platform to identify fully human antibodies against two Biogen Idec targets and two Novo Nordisk targets. Under terms of both deals, Adimab’s partners will have an option to commercialize antibodies resulting from their respective programs. In return, Adimab will receive up-front payments and preclinical milestones, along with potential clinical development milestones and sales royalties.

The firm in addition reported that another partner, Merrimack Pharmaceuticals, has exercised a commercial license to a therapeutic program (MM-151), which is scheduled to start in clinical development later this year. The two new deals add Biogen Idec and Novo Nordisk to Adimab’s existing list of partners including Merck, Roche, Novartis, Pfizer, Eli Lilly, Genentech, and Human Genome Sciences.

Adimab’s antibody technology centers on its fully integrated yeast-based human antibody discovery and optimization platform, which it claims achieves unmatched speed in terms of generating purified full-length human IgGs against a target antigen. The platform has been designed to circumvent the drawbacks of all current approaches that require the use of multiple expression hosts (e.g., mouse, E. coli, CHO, NS0) and numerous reformatting steps between hosts, which compromise quality and speed. The firm claims that for a typical project it can generally deliver purified, whole IgGs (at least 50 micrograms per clone) within eight weeks of initiating a selection campaign.

“The quality of our technology will always be the main driver for generating new collaborations, but our pharma partners are increasingly looking for unrestricted long-term access,” comments Guy Van Meter, Adimab’s senior director of business development. “Adimab’s platform, unlike many other antibody discovery platforms, is free from target restrictions. In addition, Adimab provides its pharma partners with their own unique library diversity that is different from what their competitors have.”