Symphogen and Open Monoclonal Technology Announce Collaboration

Oct 15 2013

COPENHAGEN, Denmark and PALO ALTO, California—Symphogen A/S, a private biopharmaceutical company with leadership in recombinant antibody mixtures for therapeutic use, and Open Monoclonal Technology, Inc. (OMT), an innovator in transgenic animals for development of human therapeutic antibodies, today announced an alliance that provides Symphogen with unlimited access to OMT’s OmniRat® and OmniMouse® platforms. Symphogen will use its proprietary B cell-based antibody identification technology, Symplex™, and access the diverse immune repertoires generated in OMT’s transgenic animals to develop novel human therapeutic candidates.

“OMT’s complementary transgenic animals for generation of fully human antibodies fit well with our long-standing strategy of using wild type mice and chickens and even humans as sources of rare, highly diverse antibodies,” said Ivan Horak, Chief Scientific & Medical Officer at Symphogen. “With the success of our antibody mixture approach our need for high quality antibodies has expanded and OMT’s transgenic animals will enable us to more rapidly create new multi-antibody product candidates” said Horak.

Dr. Roland Buelow, founder and CEO of OMT, continued, “Symphogen has demonstrated the therapeutic value of antibody cocktail approaches and the need for antibody diversity that targets unique epitopes. OmniRat is well proven, published and partnered. OmniMouse provides additional epitope coverage and the combined platforms will enable Symphogen to establish superior antibody cocktail products. This unlimited access, multi-platform partnership illustrates how OMT also adds value to rapidly growing, mid-size companies, which is an important element in OMT’s pursuit to make OmniRat and OmniMouse preferred brands in human therapeutic antibody discovery.”

About Symphogen A/S  
Symphogen is developing next-generation antibody therapeutics for the treatment of cancer and is dedicated to bringing truly innovative oncology products to the market.
The company has advanced the frontier of antibody discovery by creating well characterized antibody mixtures that address multiple oncology targets in a single drug product. The company has matured its oncology pipeline and has currently brought two product candidates into the clinic. The company’s productive technology suite - capable of identifying, selecting and manufacturing optimal antibody mixtures – fuels Symphogen’s innovative pipeline.
The lead oncology product, Sym004, was out-licensed to Merck KGaA in 2012 following phase 2 clinical data in late stage cancer patients.
In total, the company has raised €249 million in equity capital from premier international investors including Novo, Essex Woodlands Health Ventures and PKA, and employs 90 people, most of whom are based at Symphogen’s facilities in Copenhagen.
 
About Open Monoclonal Technology, Inc.
Open Monoclonal Technology, Inc. (OMT) is a leader in genetic engineering of animals for discovery of human therapeutic antibodies – naturally optimized human antibodies®.
OMT has created OmniRat®, the industry’s first fully human monoclonal antibody platform based on rats. It represents a novel and proprietary technology with unrestricted development options for therapeutic antibodies. OMT and Pfizer have demonstrated that OmniRat has a complete immune system with a diverse antibody repertoire and generates antibodies with human idiotypes as well as a wild-type animals make rat antibodies (Journal of Immunology 2013 Feb 15; 190(4):1481-90).
OmniMouse® is a transgenic mouse designed to complement OmniRat and further increase epitope coverage in human therapeutic antibody development. Both animals deliver antibodies with great affinity, specificity, expression, solubility and stability, yet with low or no immunogenicity or need for lead optimization. OmniFlic™ is the industry’s first engineered rat with a fixed light chain for development of human bispecific antibodies.
OMT’s antibody platforms have broad freedom to operate and use technology protected by new patents and patent applications. They are available for licensing worldwide for all targets and indications and are presently partnered with Janssen, Merck KGaA, Pfizer, Symphogen, WuXi AppTec and other biopharmaceutical companies.

For more information, please visit www.symphogen.com and www.omtinc.net or contact:

Annes Associates
Shari Annes
Phone:  +1 650-888-0902
E-mail: [email protected]

Gayle Mills
Chief Business Officer
Symphogen A/S
California office phone: +1 650 464 3656
E- mail: [email protected]

Brian Lundstrom
Chief Business Officer
Open Monoclonal Technology, Inc.
Phone:    +1-775-420-7750
E-mail: [email protected]