Oxford BioTherapeutics (OBT) announces that sanofi aventis has acquired an exclusive world-wide license to one of OBT’s internal preclinical antibody programmes. Sanofi-aventis intends to use the licensed antibody, which is directed against a novel, proprietary target identified by OBT, to develop, manufacture and commercialize Antibody Drug Conjugate (ADC) products for the treatment of cancer. ADC products comprise toxins attached to antibodies which form effective therapeutic products that attack tumour cells in a highly targeted manner.
Under the terms of the agreement, sanofi-aventis agreed to pay OBT an undisclosed upfront cash payment. OBT is eligible for development and regulatory milestone payments on the programme, royalties on the worldwide products sales and will receive additional performance milestones.
“This is the most advanced antibody licensing deal that OBT has signed to date and I am delighted that the target and antibody capabilities that we have built have been recognized by a world leading pharmaceutical company such as sanofi-aventis,” said Christian Rohlff, CEO of OBT. “Given their expertise and experience in cancer drug development, I am very pleased that a programme from our broad preclinical pipeline will be developed by sanofi-aventis.”
The initiative integrates OBT’s expertise in cancer target and antibody discovery with the inhouse antibody development capabilities of sanofi-aventis. A key component of OBT’s expertise in cancer target discovery is the company’s OGAP proteomic database, which represents one of the world’s largest proprietary human cancer cell-surface protein repositories combined with highly relevant genomic and clinical information derived from human blood and cancer tissue studies.
Oxford BioTherapeutics (OBT) is focused on the development of targeted medicines for oncology. OBT’s strategy is to develop innovative antibody-based cancer drugs, with integrated diagnostics, against novel targets that it has discovered in its unique OGAP proteomic database.
The Oxford Genome Anatomy Project (OGAP) database represents the world’s largest proprietary collection of disease-associated proteins. OGAP oncology contains proteomic data on 5,000 cancer membrane proteins combined with their genomic and clinical information derived from human blood and cancer tissue studies.