Symphogen in infectious disease collaboration with Genentech

COPENHAGEN—Symphogen A/S announced it entered a global strategic collaboration with Genentech Inc. for antibody therapeutics against three undisclosed infectious disease targets. In this collaboration, Symphogen will apply its proprietary Symplex antibody discovery technology platform to identify novel infectious disease drug candidates. Furthermore, Genentech will gain access to Symphogen's Sympress technology to produce recombinant polyclonal antibodies.

"We believe this alliance with Genentech is a recognition of our antibody discovery and expression technologies," says Kirsten Drejer, Ph.D., CEO of Symphogen. "This deal underscores our belief that Symphogen's technologies offer a valuable approach to create next-generation therapeutics that address critical unmet medical needs in the treatment of serious infections."

Under the terms of the agreement, Genentech will make an undisclosed upfront payment to Symphogen, as well as an equity investment in the company. In addition, Symphogen is eligible to receive milestone payments upon the success of certain research and development milestones, as well as royalties on any products developed and commercialized by Genentech as a result of this collaboration. The total value of the agreement has the potential to exceed $330 million, and Genentech will obtain an exclusive worldwide license to candidates developed through this agreement and will fund associated research and development costs.

"Through this deal we are supporting one of our major business objectives of establishing partnerships around our antibody discovery and manufacturing capabilities," Drejer adds. "Technology platform deals such as this complement our internal proprietary product development efforts utilizing recombinant polyclonal antibodies against multiple diseases. Symphogen's recombinant antibody technologies capture the diversity and specificity of the natural human immune response and lead to truly human antibody therapeutics."

Symphogen's Symplex antibody discovery process isolates B lymphocytes, which are responsible for making antibodies, from naturally immune human donors displaying a high number of antibodies against a particular target antigen. The technology enables the exact identity of the original donor antibody repertoire to be maintained and mimics the natural human immune response.

The company's Sympress technology uses a proprietary mammalian expression platform to enable the manufacturing of target-specific, fully human recombinant polyclonal antibodies. Based on industry-standard antibody expression cell lines Sympress enables consistent and reproducible manufacturing of recombinant polyclonal antibodies. DDN