Dr Adam M Hill, CEO of Oncimmune said: “The acquisition of Protagen will accelerate Oncimmune’s product discovery process, will grow our library of known and novel immunogenic proteins, and will underpin the group’s ability to deliver value through the development of complementary diagnostics, a key component of our three-year forward strategy.
“Protagen’s biomarker discovery expertise and high throughput antigen screening technology are all highly synergistic to Oncimmune’s current capabilities. I look forward to working with our new colleagues to grow our company.”
Oncimmune Holdings plc (LON:ONC), a leader in the development, manufacture and commercialisation of personalised immunodiagnostics for the screening, detection and care of cancer, today announces it has acquired Protagen Diagnostics AG (“Protagen”) for a total consideration of up to £4.11 million, to be paid by the allotment of up to 2,635,910 Oncimmune Ordinary Shares at 156p per share, a premium of 71% to the closing mid-market price on
18 March 2019.
Protagen has an established revenue-generating business developing precision medicine and patient stratification tools for leading pharmaceutical multinationals in both immuno-oncology and autoimmune disease. These tools support drug development, improve treatment strategies and patient management. Its proprietary high throughput SeroTag® biomarker engine, which is used to discover and validate novel biomarkers, and NavigAID® arrays for disease stratification and response prediction, offer powerful complementary tools to Oncimmune’s proprietary EarlyCDT® product platform. This acquisition further unlocks the latent potential of tumour-related antibodies in detecting disease and directing therapy.
The combination of Oncimmune’s expertise in product design and development, its existing library of known immunogenic proteins and US-based CLIA laboratory, with Protagen’s biomarker discovery capabilites will offer the group a highly differentiated “end-to-end” proposition in the delivery of complementary in vitro diagnostics.
QIAGEN N.V. (“QIAGEN”) has been involved with Protagen as an investor in the past and will continue to be an investor in Oncimmune following this transaction.
