Boehringer Ingelheim has entered a strategic collaboration with UK biotech Enara Bio to research and discover novel targeted cancer immunotherapies.
The agreement will leverage Enara’s Dark Antigen discovery platform to identify and validate novel dark antigens in up to three tumour types across the lung and gastrointestinal cancer areas.
Dark antigens are a new class of cancer-associated antigens that derive from genomic dark matter – the portion of the human genome that is normally not expressed as protein.
In healthy cells, dark antigen-encoding sequences are usually silenced but are activated and presented on tumour cells – they are often associated with specific cancer types and are shared across patients.
Within the collaboration, Boehringer and Enara will aim to discover shared antigens that could lead to the development of vaccines that can be used in a broad group of cancer patients.
Under the terms of the agreement, Boehringer has the option to license dark antigens discovered and validated by Enara.
Read more: http://www.pharmatimes.com/news/boehringer_ingelheim_and_enara_bio_join_forces_to_discover_cancer_immunotherapies_1361363