LONDON (ShareCast) - (Sharecast News) - Immunodiagnostics company Oncimmune Holdings has signed an antigen-targeting collaboration, it announced on Tuesday, to support drug development with a "leading", unnamed United States biopharmaceutical company, which is developing novel therapies based on the human immune response.
The AIM-traded firm said under the agreement, it would be utilising its proprietary biomarker discovery engine 'SeroTag' to identify antigen targets from selected human immunoglobulin antibodies.

It described SeroTag as a high-throughput multiplex technology, based on "one of the largest" in-house protein libraries, as well as a unique, ever-growing repository of disease data for indications, including autoimmune diseases and cancer.

As a result, Oncimmune said it was helping to address a number of challenges currently hindering the successful development and broader application of both cancer immunotherapies and treatments for autoimmune diseases.

The agreement also provides Oncimmune with the right to develop commercial companion diagnostic devices for each candidate that was validated, or benefit from a third-party developing such devices, in return for the receipt of a series of milestone payments.

"In our half year results ... we announced the growing pipeline of potential commercial projects with major pharmaceutical companies, including signing our first pharmaceutical deal," said chief executive officer Adam Hill.

"This drug development collaboration agreement both validates last year's acquisition of Oncimmune Germany - previously called Protagen Diagnostics - and, importantly, moves Oncimmune's commercial proposition beyond early cancer detection into supporting the process of drug development and adoption.

"Antigen targeting has always been a focus of our three-year forward strategy, and I am now delighted to see our platform used in this endeavour."

At 1519 BST, shares in Oncimmune Holdings were up 5.27% at 78.95p.

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