Adimab said today it has launched a research collaboration with Kodiak Sciences—while Eli Lilly, Jounce Therapeutics, and Kite Pharma have agreed to license antibody programs developed under existing partnerships.
The value of the collaborations was not disclosed.
Adimab agreed to use its proprietary platform to discover and/or optimize antibodies against targets chosen by Kodiak. The company will have the right to develop and commercialize all therapeutic antibodies resulting from the collaboration, Adimab said.
Kodiak designs and develops novel therapies for the treatment of retinal disease. The company was founded in 2009 as Oligasis and renamed itself last September. In January, Kodiak said it closed on a $34 million Series B financing led by an undisclosed “U.S.-based life sciences-focused investor,” with proceeds intended to speed up existing therapeutic programs and deepen its pipeline of retinal treatments.
The partnership is similar to one announced in January by iTeos Therapeutics to discover, develop, and commercialize an unspecified “multiple” antibody-based therapeutic program using Adimab’s antibody discovery and optimization platform to identify fully human therapeutic antibodies.
Adimab’s announcement today included the iTeos alliance as well as the disclosure that Lilly, Jounce, and Kite had all exercised independent commercial licenses to antibody programs generated under existing collaborations.
Adimab agreed in 2010 to use its discovery platform to identify fully human antibodies against two targets selected by Lilly. The collaboration was expanded in 2013 to include discovery and optimization of multiple bispecific antibodies targeting molecular targets identified by Lilly.
In 2014, Adimab launched its partnership with Jounce, which agreed to provide multiple targets to Adimab for discovery of fully human antibodies or bispecifics.
Last year, Adimab agreed to use its platform to generate Immunoglobulin G antibodies against multiple targets selected by Kite, with the goal of discovering antibodies for Kite’s chimeric antigen receptor T-cell (CAR-T) therapies.
In announcing the Kite and Jounce partnerships, Adimab said those and other partners had the option to license exclusively antibodies arising from the collaborations for development and commercialization.
In return, the partners agreed to pay Adimab. Kite agreed to pay an upfront payment, research fees, and technical milestone payments, as well as license fees, certain additional milestones, and royalties. All sums were undisclosed.
Also undisclosed were the research fees, license fees, clinical milestones, and royalties Jounce agreed to pay Adimab under their collaboration.
Over the past 7 years, Adimab has established funded discovery collaborations with more than 35 companies.
