Biovation and Roche sign agreement
Biovation of Aberdeen, UK, a Merck KGaA group company, has signed a research agreement with F Hoffmann-La Roche of Basel, Switzerland, under which Biovation will apply its proprietary DeImmunisation technology for the generation of novel biopharmaceuticals.
Biovation of Aberdeen, UK, a Merck KGaA group company, has signed a research agreement with F Hoffmann-La Roche of Basel, Switzerland, under which Biovation will apply its proprietary DeImmunisation technology for the generation of novel biopharmaceuticals.
Biovation will receive research revenues and, in the event Roche pursues further development, could earn license fees, milestone payments and royalties on future product sales.
'We are excited to be working with Roche in our mutual quest for improved biopharmaceuticals for chronic diseases,' said Dr. Frank Carr, president ceo of Biovation. 'We look forward to applying our deImmunisation technology to Roche's leads in order to generate molecules whose clinical effectiveness is not compromised by immunogenicity.
DeImmunisation represents an entirely different approach to reducing immunogenicity. The technology addresses a major driver of immunogenicity in therapeutic antibodies and proteins, namely T cell epitopes. The deImmunisation technology involves the identification and removal of T cell epitopes from the molecule. Since potentially immunogenic regions of the molecule are removed by single amino acid substitutions, immunogenicity can be eliminated while retaining the properties of the starting molecule.