Oxford BioTherapeutics Grants Third Exclusive License to Boehringer Ingelheim for Development and Commercialization of Antibody Products to a Novel Oncology Target
Oxford BioTherapeutics (OBT), Calculus portfolio company, has announced that Boehringer Ingelheim has exercised its option to receive exclusive rights to a third novel oncology target from an ongoing discovery collaboration. The target was discovered using OBTs proprietary OGAP® drug discovery platform, which incorporates one of the world’s largest proteomic databases, integrating clinical, experimental and expression data. The option triggers another milestone payment from Boehringer Ingelheim to OBT.
Under the terms of the agreement, Boehringer Ingelheim will be responsible for the future development and commercialization of antibody products to the target. OBT will receive development and regulatory milestone payments as well as royalties on any future product sales. This represents the third asset to be optioned under the longstanding partnership between OBT and Boehringer Ingelheim, with the first two programs already in clinical development.
“Boehringer Ingelheim’s decision to exercise its option on a third oncology drug target, developed under our collaboration, is further validation of our proprietary OGAP® drug discovery platform,” said OBT’s Chief Executive Officer, Dr. Christian Rohlff. “Selecting the right target is fundamental for the successful development of a first-in-class antibody drug product. OBT’s platforms are designed to discover and engineer antibody constructs to novel therapeutic targets – including bi-specific, Chimeric Antigen Receptor T Cell (CAR-T), other T- cell and NK cell-mediated cytotoxicity (ADCC) and ADC therapeutics – to best address difficult-to-treat cancers. We believe that the advancement of the first two Boehringer Ingelheim compounds, directed to oncology targets identified by us, into the clinic, further validates our approach.”
In addition to the programs in the partnership with Boehringer Ingelheim, OBT’s own clinical assets have also been enabled through the OGAP® discovery platform. A major differentiator between OBT’s discovery platform and other approaches is the retention of the link between individual patient samples through to the design of therapeutic antibodies and diagnostic patient selection tools, which increases the overall success rate of these novel compounds transitioning into clinical development.