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(Alliance News) - Oncimmune Holdings PLC announced on Tuesday it had signed a number of commercial contracts within its ImmunoINSIGHTS business.
Shares in Oncimmune were up 9.4% at 170.59 pence on Tuesday afternoon in London following the announcement.
The Nottingham-based immunodiagnostics developer said it had signed a master service agreement and a commercial contract with an unnamed pharmaceutical company. The commercial contract is to provide autoantibody biomarker services measuring Immunoglobulin E autoantibodies for planned autoimmune studies.
"Immunoglobulin E plays an important part of the body's immune response but can also result in hypersensitivities such as allergic asthma" the company explained.
Oncimmune added that a second contract has been agreed with this company and is expected to be signed in the next few days. The second pending contract will evaluate the autoantibody profiles of patient samples collected in an autoimmune trial for chronic idiopathic urticaria, a chronic form of hives.
Both programmes are scheduled to be completed by the end of its 2022 financial year.
A commercial collaboration agreement was also signed with the European Organisation for Research & Treatment of Cancer. This contract involves an autoantibody profiling collaboration with the EORTC which will evaluate the autoantibody profiles of patient samples collected in an ongoing phase three trial investigating treatment Keytruda as monotherapy for surgically resected, high-risk melanoma.
Resection is the medical term for surgically removing part or all of a tissue, structure, or organ. Melanoma is a serious type of skin cancer that can spread to other organs in the body.
Additionally, Oncimmune said it was in the final stages of agreeing two new collaborations with US-based academic institutes that it did not name. These new collaborations will, in part, focus on segments for its existing technology platform, including chimeric antigen receptor cell therapy cells, known as CAR-T, and chimeric antigen receptor natural killer cells, known as CAR-NK.
CAR T-cell therapy is a type of immunotherapy in which a specialist collects and makes a small change to the body's T cells. After a few weeks, a drip containing these cells are put back into the bloodstream. The CAR T-cells then recognise and attack the cancer cells.
Natural killer cells are a critical component of the innate immune system. Chimeric antigen receptors re-direct these natural killer cells toward tumour cells carrying the corresponding antigens.
By Heather Rydings; heatherrydings@alliancenews.com
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