Oncimmune inks deal with global pharma firm

Immunodiagnostics company Oncimmune has signed an autoantibody profiling agreement with an unnamed global pharmaceutical company, it announced on Monday, to evaluate the autoantibody profiles of patient samples in various autoimmune diseases.

The AIM-traded firm said the initial phase of the project, including the reporting of profiled data, was scheduled to complete by the end of the 2021 calendar year.

Under the agreement, Oncimmune would use its proprietary ‘NavigAID’ autoimmune disease characterisation panel to explore the autoantibody profiles of patients with four key autoimmune diseases, namely systemic lupus erythematosus, Sjögren's syndrome, rheumatoid arthritis and sicca syndrome.

Oncimmune said its customised autoimmune disease panel had been developed to explore the mechanisms of action, disease stratification and response prediction in clinical trials.

The programme was Oncimmune's second agreement with the global partner, with the board saying it further validated the value of its autoantibody biomarker profiling technology in supporting pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies in their clinical development programmes.

“We are delighted that this global pharmaceutical company has again chosen to partner with Oncimmune, for our world class autoantibody biomarker profiling technology and autoimmune expertise,” said chief executive officer Dr Adam Hill.

“We are confident that this latest programme will form part of a larger and long-term collaboration and we look forward to supporting their programmes in immunology further through clinical development.”

Dr Hill said the agreement further demonstrated the “strength” of the ‘ImmunoINSIGHTS’ service, the increasing recognition of Oncimmune's expertise in autoimmune disease, and its partnering strategy.

“This new contract is also a good illustration of the growing uptake of our services, validating our decision to invest in the physical and human infrastructure of our platform to increase capacity significantly, with further pipeline conversion expected over the coming months and beyond.”

At 1219 BST, shares in Oncimmune Holdings wre down 8.42% at 174p.