Boehringer Ingelheim collaboration

Boehringer Ingelheim and 4-Antibody are to collaborate on a long-term project to discover and develop fully human therapeutic antibodies for targets in various disease indications. 

Swiss-based 4-Antibody will use its proprietary and unencumbered Hu-PAC and Retrocyte Display technologies for the discovery and development of fully human antibodies against novel targets nominated by Boehringer Ingelheim. 4-Antibody will receive payments of up to €177.5m (CHF 266m) including upfront and milestone payments from Boehringer Ingelheim upon achievement of certain clinical development milestones. Further financial details were not disclosed. 

Dr Ulf Grawunder, co-founder and CSO of 4-Antibody, said: "This is a landmark agreement for 4-Antibody. We are delighted to commence a long-term collaboration with Boehringer Ingelheim and to apply the strength of 4-Antibody's fully human antibody discovery and engineering platforms to create valuable potential new drug candidates. Our unique and unencumbered technology capabilities allow the efficient generation of novel or improved fully human antibodies against any target class for our collaboration partners and for our own clinical development pipeline." 

4-Antibody owns four patent families related to therapeutic antibody discovery platforms and products, including more than a dozen granted patents worldwide. It has headquarters in Basel, with a subsidiary in Jena, Germany.