WuXi Biologics and Oxford BioTherapeutics announced the expansion of their strategic and innovative immuno-oncology (IO) alliance through which OBT will research, develop and commercialize five novel bispecific antibodies for the treatment of several cancer types using WuXi Biologics’ proprietary WuXiBody Platform.
The deal brings together OBT’s target discovery and development expertise with WuXi Biologics’ extensive expertise in developing world-class bispecific antibodies, to build value for both companies as OBT works to develop and commercialize this exciting portfolio of potential next-generation antibody-based cancer drugs. WuXi Biologics will receive an upfront payment as well as potential development, regulatory and commercial milestone payments up to $450 million, and will be entitled to royalties based on global sales of these bispecific antibodies.
“Our immuno-oncology (IO) collaboration with WuXi Biologics, around the WuXiBody bispecific platform and clinical mid-stage PD-L1 antibody, is a significant step for OBT to deepen and broaden our exciting first-in-class IO pipeline,” said Dr. Christian Rohlff, Chief Executive Officer of Oxford BioTherapeutics. “Combining OBT’s novel second generation IO medicines with a major check-point pathway into a single entity, with potential broad utility across many solid and liquid tumor types, is designed to generate novel therapies for patients who do not benefit from the existing IO medicines. Novel products from this collaboration, which combine multiple treatment modalities into a single agent, will improve the risk/benefit ratio, reduce costs and optimize future commercial potential. This deal will allow us to clearly differentiate our product development strategies from existing IO therapies and to generate products that will play a key role in shaping the future treatment landscape for oncology. Products from this deal are expected to play a key role in OBT’s commitment to curing cancer.”
“We are excited to expand our strategic partnership with OBT to include the proprietary WuXiBody platform. This is the 3rd partnership we signed since we globally launched this exciting platform this September,” said Dr. Chris Chen, Chief Executive Officer of WuXi Biologics. “Quick adoption of our proprietary WuXiBody bispecific platform further validates our beliefs that this platform addresses most technical limitations of current bispecific platforms and can potentially tremendously reduce the cost of making these biologics. We have achieved 16g/L in cell culture titer, 95+% purity after one-step Protein A purification and 95+% step yield for Protein A step. WuXi Biologics will continue to invest to develop next-generation globally leading technologies to transform biologics discovery, development and manufacturing.”