Boehringer Ingelheim and Adimab Partner on Antibodies

Boehringer Ingelheim and Adimab Partner on Antibodies

Jan 18, 2018PAO-M01-18-NI-030

BI will leverage Adimab’s platform to optimize antibodies against targets of their choice.

Adimab, LLC, has confirmed a multi-target partnership with Boehringer Ingelheim. According to their agreement, Adimab will its proprietary platform to discover and optimize antibodies against targets chosen by BI. BI will then have the right to develop and commercialize therapeutic programs that stem from this collaboration. 

Tillman Gerngross, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of Adimab, explained the development, noting: “In vivo technologies can work well for many therapeutic targets. However, with increasing demands on selectivity, developability, affinity, and epitopic diversity, mice are often not up to the task.” He continued, adding: “Not only are we able to overcome many of those limitations but our engineering capabilities allow us to optimize any lead to become a best-in-class differentiated molecule.” 

According to the agreement, Adimab’s yeast-based discovery and optimization platform will identify fully human antibodies against multiple targets, which will be selected by BI. BI will be able to evaluate antibody panels generated during this, to potentially be used in therapeutic products. As part of the terms, Adimab will be the beneficiary of an undisclosed upfront payment, research fees, and delivery milestones.

For each target, Adimab will grant BI the right to evaluate antibody panels generated during the collaboration for potential use in therapeutic products. Adimab will receive an undisclosed upfront payment, research fees, and delivery milestones. In addition, for each target, Boehringer Ingelheim will have an option to exclusively license antibodies generated during the collaboration as therapeutic leads, for which Adimab would receive license fees, clinical milestones and royalties on product sales. 

Adimab technology has been transferred and implemented at companies such as Merck, Novo Nordisk, Biogen, GSK and Lilly. Funded discovery partners include Novo Nordisk, Biogen, GSK, Roche, Novartis, Lilly, Genentech, Celgene, Gilead, Kyowa Hakko Kirin, Sanofi and more.