Chinese contract research organisation (CRO) WuXi Pharmatech and US therapeutic antibodies developer Open Monoclonal Technology (OMT) have agreed to expand WuXi’s use of OMT’s antibodies technology across Asia.
The agreement enables WuXi to increase its use of OmniRat and OmiMouse technologies, which can provide additional development and commercial opportunities for the firm’s clients.
OmniRat is a fully human monoclonal antibody platform based on transgenic rats, which are able to make human idiotypes, just as a wild rat makes normal antibodies. OmniMouse further increases epitope coverage in human antibody development.
WuXi is currently the only company in China authorised to use the OMT technology, which has been duplicated in the firm’s laboratories in Shanghai.
“This new agreement allows WuXi to further expand its service offerings with the OmniRat and OmniMouse platforms,” said Edward Hu, chief operating officer and chief financial officer of WuXi PharmaTech.
“WuXi is proud of the confidence OMT has shown in the quality of WuXi’s antibody research capabilities and intellectual property protection practices in authorising WuXi to host the OmniRat and OmniMouse platforms in our laboratories.”
The agreement allows WuXi’s clients to develop and commercialise products globally or regionally in China, Korea, Japan or other Asian territories. Clients that opt for regional rights first can assume global rights prior to the first human dose.
The company said this could be particularly attractive for companies that have already established regional Asian operations and have aspirations to become global later. OMT retains the global product rights until and unless each option is exercised.
Dr Roland Buelow, founder and CEO of OMT, added: “This second agreement with WuXi continues the global deployment of OMT’s human antibody technologies.
“The deal structure enables OMT to tap into the economics of rapidly growing Asian companies and, when global rights are not exercised by WuXi’s clients, to leverage their data for OMT product development and/or partnering outside Asia.”