Date: 2012-05-09
Type of information: Services contract
Compound: antibody discovery and development service
Company: Evotec (Germany) 4-Antibody (Germany)
Therapeutic area:
Type agreement: R&D
services
Action mechanism:
Disease:
Details: Evotec and 4-Antibody have signed a strategic collaboration agreement under which Evotec will offer a fully integrated antibody discovery and development service. Evotec’s novel and unique high throughput and high content screening approach coupled with 4-Antibody’s high throughput antibody selection approach will now allow screening of large and diverse antibody populations for desired functionality and activity at a much earlier stage of selection. This unique combined approach is expected to substantially reduce attrition rates at later development stages and is also expected to be particularly beneficial in aiding earlier distinction and selection between antagonist and agonist antibodies. Evotec’s fully integrated drug discovery and development infrastructure has been adapted to facilitate screening of human antibody populations in combination with high throughput/high content screening coupled to specific biological assays. The new collaboration integrates the output from 4-Antibody’s proprietary high throughput in vitro Retrocyte Display® technology for rapid discovery of fully human antibodies into Evotec’s high throughput cell-based assay platform. The Retrocyte Display® technology (Retroviral B lymphocyte Display) is a high throughput cellular antibody expression platform which allows expression and screening of full-length immunoglobulin antibody libraries in mammalian B-lineage cells for the identification of antigen-specific fully human monoclonal antibodies. B-lineage cells are designed by nature for optimal antibody display, and are capable of generating ‘better-behaved’, fully human antibodies.
Financial terms: Both parties agreed to share financial rewards of this approach. Evotec will initially pay a € 2m access fee to 4-Antibody, which will be fully reimbursed from future returns. Going forward the Parties will share profits.
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