Contract signed with Verily Life Sciences

RNS Number : 9424C

Oncimmune Holdings PLC

28 February 2022

 

28 February 2022

Oncimmune Holdings plc

("Oncimmune" or the "Company")

Contract signed with Verily Life Sciences, an Alphabet company, to profile autoantibodies for long COVID-19

Oncimmune Holdings plc (AIM: ONC.L), the leading global immunodiagnostics group, today announces the signing of a new commercial contract with Verily Life Sciences LLC ("Verily"), an Alphabet company (parent company to Google), focusing on the autoantibody profiling of patients who have had the COVID-19 infection and have gone on to develop long lasting symptoms lasting more than four weeks ("Long COVID" also known as post-acute sequelae SARS-CoV-2 infection ("PASC")).

Under the terms of this new contract, Oncimmune will utilise its recently validated infectious disease panel of biomarkers, developed under the IMmunity Profiling of pAtients with COVID-19 for Therapy and Triage ("IMPACTT") programme, to evaluate whether autoantibodies, which are present early in the COVID-19 infection, are associated with the development of Long COVID. Furthermore, the Company's infectious disease panel will also be used to assess whether these autoantibodies remain elevated in Long COVID patients during their period of recovery.

Should this initial discovery phase prove successful, both Oncimmune and Verily have retained the rights to commercialise the resultant intellectual property, including the filing of patent applications for the development of a companion diagnostic.

Dr Adam M Hill, CEO of Oncimmune said:  "The real impact on society of Long COVID is only beginning to be understood. Oncimmune is a leader in infectious disease serological antibody profiling, and therefore this partnership with Verily, utilising Oncimmune's validated infectious disease panel, will seek to identify autoantibodies which are indicators for Long COVID. It is yet another exemplar of Oncimmune's leading position in autoimmune profiling.

"As is typical with Oncimmune's contracts, there is potential for the initial discovery work in autoantibodies to progress onto the identification of intellectual property rights, and to the development of viable commercial companion diagnostic devices."

For further information:

Oncimmune Holdings plc

Dr Adam M Hill, Chief Executive Officer

Matthew Hall, Chief Financial Officer

[e-mail]

Singer Capital Markets (Nominated Adviser and Joint Broker)

Aubrey Powell, Harry Gooden, George Tzimas, James Fischer

[phone]

WG Partners (Joint Broker)

David Wilson, Nigel Barnes, Erland Sternby

[phone]

Media enquiries:

FTI Consulting

Ben Atwell, Michael Trace, Alex Davis

[e-mail]

[phone]

About Oncimmune

ImmunoINSIGHTS Service Business

Oncimmune is a leading immunodiagnostics developer, primarily focused on the growing fields of immuno-oncology, autoimmune disease and infectious diseases. The ImmunoINSIGHTS service business leverages Oncimmune's technology platform and methodologies across multiple diseases, to offer life-science organisations actionable insights for therapies across the development and product lifecycle. Our core immune-profiling technology is underpinned by our library of over eight thousand immunogenic proteins, one of the largest of its kind. This helps identify trial participants and patients into clinically relevant subgroups, enabling development of targeted and more effective treatments.

Oncimmune's ImmunoINSIGHTS service business is based at the Company's discovery research centre in Dortmund, Germany. The business platform enables life science organisations to optimise drug development and delivery, leading to more effectively targeted and safer treatments for patients.

The ImmunoINSIGHTS development team is based in the US and Europe and Oncimmune is seeking to replicate the Dortmund facility in the US in the medium term.

EarlyCDT Product Business

Oncimmune's immunodiagnostic technology, EarlyCDT, can detect and help identify cancer on average four years earlier than standard clinical diagnosis. Our lead diagnostic test, EarlyCDT Lung, targets a vast market estimated to grow to £3.8bn by 2024. With over 200,000 tests already performed for patients worldwide and its use being supported by peer reviewed data in over 12,000 patients, we are poised to become an integral component of future lung cancer detection programmes, globally.

Oncimmune's diagnostic products business is located at its laboratory facility in Nottingham, UK.

For more information, visit www.oncimmune.com

About Verily

Verily is a subsidiary of Alphabet (parent company of Google), focused on life sciences and healthcare. Verily's mission is to make the world's health data useful so that people enjoy healthier lives. Verily develops tools and devices to collect, organize and activate health data, and create interventions to prevent and manage disease. Verily partners with leading life sciences, medical device, and government organizations, using deep hardware, software, scientific, and healthcare expertise to enable faster development, meaningful advances, and deployment at scale.

 

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