Genmab, Medarex And Glaucus Announce Collaboration To Develop Human Antibody Therapeutics And Proteomics Technology
Genmab A/S (CSE: GEN and Neuer Markt: GE9D), Medarex (Nasdaq:MEDX), and Glaucus proteomics B.V., a privately-held company incorporated in The Netherlands, announced today that they have entered into a collaboration to develop new antibody therapeutic products to novel disease targets discovered by Glaucus. Using Medarex's HuMAb-Mouse(r) technology, Glaucus intends over the forthcoming years to establish a warehouse of fully human antibodies that will be used to construct an antibody reporter matrix. Glaucus expects to use the matrix for signature profiling of human tissues in health and disease via chip-based differential analysis of protein expression levels, i.e. in a manner similar to a cDNA biochip, but directed at the molecular workhorses of biology - proteins.
Apart from screening applications, some of these human antibodies are expected to be employed for diagnostics and therapeutic applications. In exchange for the rights to use fully human antibodies in connection with its proteomics technology, Glaucus will provide all the novel targets it discovers through its own research efforts using the HuMAb technology to the collaboration. The alliance is intended to help ensure rapid progress from target discovery to the development of therapeutic agents. Further details relating to experimental procedures and current deliverables in this sector will be reported today by Glaucus at the first Human Proteome Project meeting in McLean, Virginia.
"Our high affinity human antibodies married to proteomics technology are an ideal partnership," said Lisa. N. Drakeman, Ph.D., Chief Executive Officer of Genmab. "We believe that this collaboration has the potential to discover vital information about many disease states and to provide many novel disease targets that could lead to numerous new antibody products. This fits in with Genmab's business plan to develop a broad portfolio of new antibody therapies."
"We believe that proteomics and human antibodies will lead to many opportunities for new disease treatments, and we are extremely pleased to be working together with Glaucus and Genmab to achieve that goal," said Donald L. Drakeman, President and Chief Executive Officer of Medarex.
"With Medarex and Genmab, we intend to transform a powerful enabling technology in proteomics that is centered on target discovery into one which is also linked to a drug warehouse of pre-screened fully human antibodies. We are delighted to work together with such prestigious partners in the field of monoclonal antibodies", said the COO of Glaucus, Prof. Ian Humphery-Smith, speaking from the Human Proteome Project Meeting in McLean, Virginia. "For us, it is of paramount importance to access the highest quality antibodies from the outset of a program designed to raise antibodies against the constituents of the human proteome. Indeed, it would appear highly counter productive for us to identify targets on such a large scale using antibodies, if we then had to raise another set of human antibodies to the very same targets for therapeutic applications. Thus, not only does this present a cost-effective route going forward, we believe it opens up several highly attractive business models to the signatories of this alliance both in the short and longer term."
"It is unlikely that the Human Proteome Project will be completed without the systematic development of high affinity and high specificity antibodies directed against the output of each and every Open Reading Frame in the Human Genome. The advantage of traditional hybridoma technologies for the production of monoclonal antibodies is the high ligand-binding affinities produced, which ultimately may translate into potentially useful assay sensitivity," said Prof. Humphery-Smith.
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