Oncimmune Holdings plc (AIM: ONC.L ) has signed a new master service agreement with Augmenta Bioworks, Inc. ("Augmenta") to profile patient plasma samples and characterise therapeutic candidates discovered through Augmenta's SingleCyte® and DeepGrid™ discovery platforms.
Augmenta is a California-based biotech company which works with leading pharmaceutical companies, biotechnology companies, and research institutions to discover new therapies by identifying the human immune system's protective response to diseases.
[Source: Augmenta Inc]
Cancer Therapies
The first project to be undertaken under this agreement will utilise Oncimmune's oncology SeroTagTM technology to identify specific therapeutic antibodies that bind to human antigens found in cancer patients.
COVID-19 Therapies
Following on from the announcement on 6 October 2020, when Oncimmune announced its participation in IMPACTT programme to develop and validate an Infectious Disease NavigAID™ panel designed to predict COVID-19 disease severity and therapeutic response, this agreement also includes an option to substantially increase the number of samples analysed and to run these samples over Oncimmune's infectious disease panel.
This analysis will provide insight into clinical efficacy as well as off-target and non-specific binding as an indicator, for example, for adverse events.
Shares in ONC have increased significantly over the past three months from 143p in August to open up 1.2% at 167.5p in early trading.
Adam M Hill, CEO of Oncimmune said: "We are delighted to be partnering with such a progressive and respected organisation as Augmenta on this important programme. Oncimmune's proven SeroTag proprietary biomarker discovery engine is ideally suited to this project. We are also excited about the prospect of, once again, utilising our infectious diseases panel to help support the fight against COVID-19."
Christopher J Emig, PhD, CEO of Augmenta said: "We are looking forward to uncovering novel therapeutic candidates through the combination of Oncimmune's biomarker platform and Augmenta's massively scalable single cell analysis technologies. Additionally, the data from this project will serve to further demonstrate the superior features of our monoclonal antibodies currently in development."