BioInvent International AB (Bioinvent), a research-based pharmaceutical company that focuses on developing antibody drugs, and Les Laboratoires Servier (Servier), one of the leading independent French pharmaceutical companies, have entered into an antibody collaboration on an oncology target involved in tumour cell metabolism provided by Servier. BioInvent will receive a licensing fee, research support and potential milestone payments of more than EUR 11m, as well as royalty on future sales of the product.

Under the terms of the agreement Servier will engage BioInvent to screen its proprietary n-CoDeR library for antibodies specific to the undisclosed target. Servier will also have access to BioInvent's in-house pre-clinical capacities in selecting an antibody candidate for development.

Svein Mathisen, president and CEO of BioInvent, said: “We believe Servier is an excellent partner for this research project in antibody discovery and research. Oncology is a prioritized area for BioInvent as for Servier and we look forward to joining our knowledge to theirs in this area.”

“The Bioinvent n-CoDeR library will be used in combination with a functional assay set up at Servier to select antibody candidates. This is expected to enable us to develop one of the first monoclonal antibodies targeting tumour cell metabolism, an approach anticipated to have major therapeutic potential”, said Stéphane Depil, MD, PhD, in charge of oncology R&D at Servier.

Emmanuel Canet, MD, PhD, president of Servier R&D, said: “ With this new collaboration Servier will reinforce its capacity of using biologics to address very innovative targets for treating cancer and we are looking forward to benefiting from Bioinvent's experience in the field. “

The n-CoDeR library contains more than 20 billion (2 x 10¹º) highly diverse, fully human antibody fragments that have been created using BioInvent's patented technology platform, generating antibodies with high affinity and selectivity. Owing to the strict use of in vivo proof-read CDR sequences without insertion of synthetic genetic building blocks it is expected that n-CoDeR antibodies will show an improved immunogenicity profile.