IONTAS strikes deal with Paris biotech Inotrem to aid fight against inflammatory disease
Pampisford-based IONTAS has struck a deal with immunotherapy specialist Inotrem, which is focused on developing treatments for inflammatory diseases.
IONTAS will apply its mammalian display technology to identify antibodies involved in the TREM-1 pathway.
Paris-based Inotrem has identified this pathway as a key therapeutic target for many acute or chronic inflammation syndromes, including sepsis and myocardial infarction.
TREM-1 is an immunoreceptor expressed on innate immune cells.
Dr Neil Butt, chief business officer of IONTAS, said: “By harnessing our expertise and novel mammalian display technology, we are pleased to support Inotrem in its mission to leverage the therapeutic potential of the TREM-1 pathway.
“As well as generating an abundance of therapeutic antibody leads, our platform addresses developability issues early, to provide Inotrem with an increased likelihood of successfully identifying and progressing leads.”
The collaboration gives Inotrem access to IONTAS’ proprietary platform, enabling the selection of specific high-affinity antibodies with optimal biophysical properties.
This will help Inotrem reduce the chemistry, manufacturing and control (CMC) risk as it develops TREM-1 inhibition-based therapies.
The platform screens antibodies in IgG format, in the context of a mammalian cell, which allows researchers to assess lead candidate function, expression and the potential to develop early in the discovery process.
It also enables large numbers of clones to be screened using fluorescence-activated cell sorting (FACS), as opposed to low-throughput ELISA.
Dr Marc Derive, co-founder and chief scientific officer of Inotrem, said: “Following the expansion of our Series B fundraising to €58million, this collaboration with IONTAS allows us to diversify our lead generation process, ultimately helping us to bring new therapies for major public inflammatory diseases.”
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