Oncimmune Holdings plc (LON:ONC), the leading global immunodiagnostics group, has today announced it has signed a further commercial contract under its existing master services agreement with a top five global pharmaceutical company, profiling over 350 chronic idiopathic urticaria1 (“CIU”) patients for biomarkers to characterise disease and stratify patients for therapy.
This follows on from the previous announcement on the 21 December 2021, that ImmunoINSIGHTS had signed an MSA with a leading global pharmaceutical company, under which an initial commercial contract was signed to provide autoantibody biomarker services.
Under the terms of this latest contract, ImmunoINSIGHTS will profile the Immunoglobulin G (“IgG”) autoantibodies present in over 350 CIU patients. Profiling prior to and after treatment will allow assessment of whether these biomarkers can better characterise the disease, and in turn lead to the stratification of patients for response to therapy. The study will also uncover insights to support the clinical development of a therapeutic for CIU.
Oncimmune will customise its existing SeroTagTM autoimmune disease discovery array to add specific antigens related to CIU. If successful, a panel of the best performing autoantibodies can then be validated on samples from additional trials performed by our client.
The previously announced project for this client to measure Immunoglobulin E (“IgE”) autoantibodies is progressing to plan and on schedule. Once finalised, the samples from this IgG study will also be profiled for IgE autoantibodies, which will in turn contribute to our knowledge of autoantibody profiles in CIU. The second agreement with this global pharmaceutical partner, further validates the value of Oncimmune’s autoantibody biomarker profiling technology in supporting pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies in their clinical development programmes.
Additionally, Oncimmune today announced that the Company has recently established an office at the Cambridge Innovation Center (“CIC”), Kendall Square, Boston, USA which will be the new base for our Chief Business Officer, Cameron Barnard, and enables the ImmunoINSIGHTS commercial team to operate in closer proximity to many of the Company’s North American pharma clients.
Dr Adam M Hill, CEO of Oncimmune Holdings said: “We are delighted to announce this second, follow-on, contract with a leading global pharmaceutical group. This contract, along with others previously announced and other unannounced contracts, further demonstrates the growing commercial momentum behind our ImmunoINSIGHTS platform. The establishment of an office at CIC will facilitate more efficient business development interactions for our North American clients. We look forward to updating shareholders on operational progress when we announce our interim results for the period ended to 30 November 2021 later this month.”
1 CIU, also known as hives, is a skin disease which is often caused by an allergic reaction to food or drugs. In a small number of cases, the disease is chronic and of unknown cause.
