Oncimmune agrees two new commercial contracts

Immunodiagnostics company Oncimmune announced the signing of two new commercial contracts for its ‘ImmunoINSIGHTS’ platform on Friday.

The AIM-traded firm said the first contract was with an unnamed US-based clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company, which was developing “first-in-class” cellular immunotherapies for cancer patients using off-the-shelf ‘natural killer’ (NK) cell and CAR-NK cell products.

Under the contract, Oncimmune would use its specific high-throughput proprietary biomarker discovery platform ‘SeroTag’ to identify autoantibodies that could be predictive of patient clinical response, and potential resistance to engineered cellular therapies in haematological and solid tumour oncology indications.

The second contract, meanwhile, was signed with an unidentified US-based clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company developing proprietary immune system technology, designed to combat cancer through the discovery, development and commercialisation of “transformative” oncology treatments.

It said the project would profile the autoantibodies in patients treated with a virus-like particle which stimulates anti-tumor T-cells.

By profiling patients longitudinally, the aim of the project was to demonstrate how the immune system was affected by this therapy.

“We are pleased to announce a further two contracts with our ImmunoINSIGHTS platform which demonstrates the progress that our commercial team are making from our new US office in Boston,” said chief executive officer Dr Adam Hill.

“We are particularly excited by the signing of our first contract within the allogeneic and CAR-NK market segment which we believe could open up a new opportunity for our services in the engineered cellular therapy space.

“Unlocking the utility of the ImmunoINSIGHTS platform in these cutting-edge therapies promises to substantially improve clinical outcomes for cancer patients.”

At 1220 BST, shares in Oncimmune Holdings were up 3.83% at 130.57p.