On October 17, 2012 Tanabe Research Laboratories U.S.A. Inc. (TRL) and its parent company Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma Corporation (Osaka, Japan) reported that they have entered into a strategic research collaboration and license agreement with Covagen of Zurich Switzerland (Press release Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma, OCT 17, 2012, View Source [SID:1234501610]).
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Under the agreement, Covagen will use Covagen’s proprietary Fynomer-antibody platform to generate bispecific proteins (FynomAbs) against two target pairs selected by TRL and Mitsubishi Tanabe. Fynomers are small binding proteins that can be engineered to bind to any antigen of interest. Because of their excellent biophysical properties, Fynomers can be readily fused to therapeutic proteins such as antibodies to create bispecific FynomAbs.
Under the agreement, Mitsubishi Tanabe will fund all research activities and be solely responsible for the development, manufacturing and global commercialization activities. "Bispecific therapeutic compounds have enormous potential in the treatment of many types of diseases and this collaboration is an important validation of our pioneering work in this field." said Julian Bertschinger, Ph.D., chief executive officer of Covagen.
Dragan Grabulovski, Ph.D., chief scientific officer of Covagen, added: "This agreement underlines the value of our FynomAb platform as a source of innovative bispecific biologics with excellent biophysical properties and positions our company as a highly attractive partner for the development of next generation biotherapeutics."
Roland Newman, Ph.D. chief scientific officer of TRL, said: "This collaboration with Covagen will allow TRL and Mitsubishi Tanabe to bring a new generation of biologics with novel mechanisms to physicians and their patients. We anticipate an exciting and fruitful relationship with Covagen utilizing their bispecific FynomAb technology and their extensive expertise in this area."