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AlgoNomics selects CTCLS as Japanese representative for its immunogenicity screening services.
Epibase ® addressing the fast growing biopharmaceuticals market in Japan.
Ghent, Belgium and Tokyo, Japan – May 2, 2007 - AlgoNomics, a global provider of immunogenicity screening solutions, and CTC Laboratory Systems Corporation (CTCLS), a leading supplier of software, services and consultancy to the Japanese pharmaceutical and biotech industry, today announced to have entered into an agreement for AlgoNomics’ Epibase® screening technology.
This collaboration allows Japanese industry to access screening tools to improve the development of biopharmaceuticals, currently the fastest growing market segment in the pharma industry.
All proteins delivered as biopharmaceuticals show some level of immunogenicity, a drug related side effect where the patient recognizes the protein as a "foreign" substance. This side effect reduces the efficacy of the drug and leads to a rapid clearance of the drug from the circulation. The patented Epibase® screening technology estimates to what extent novel protein therapeutics are immunogenic.
Under the agreement, CTCLS and AlgoNomics will work together to supply Japanese partners with Epibase® screening services, which involve selection of low immunogenic biopharmaceuticals and optimization of immunogenic drug candidates.
“Epibase® is the current de facto standard for computer based immunogenicity screening. We selected AlgoNomics because of the important added value they can bring to our customers”, said Mr.Hideki Negishi, President of CTCLS.
Dr. Ignace Lasters, CEO of AlgoNomics, comments: “We are very pleased to be working with the world-class team of CTCLS as part of our global sales strategy. CTCLS’ scientific expertise is an important aspect in bringing Epibase® solutions to the Japanese biopharmaceutical industry.”
The agreement gives CTCLS exclusive access to the marketing and sales of Epibase® on the Japanese territory. Financial terms of the agreement collaboration were not disclosed.
About AlgoNomics NV
AlgoNomics is a Belgium based biotech company providing structural bioinformatics services to develop rationally designed therapeutics in the broad field of immunotherapy.
AlgoNomics owns a rich, proprietary platform for structure-based protein and peptide design. The technology platform contains innovative tools to unravel protein-protein and protein-peptide interactions.
AlgoNomics’ premier product is the Epibase® platform for T-cell epitope identification in different population groups, widely applied in the discovery of vaccines and therapeutic proteins.
For more information about AlgoNomics visit www.algonomics.com
About Epibase®
All therapeutic proteins show some level of immunogenicity, a side effect where the patient recognizes the drug as a "foreign" substance. This causes the patient's immune system to mount a defence against the therapeutic drug, which significantly reduces the efficacy of the drug and causes a rapid clearance of the drug from the circulation.
Epibase® estimates to what extent a given therapeutic protein may lead to an immune response in patients. The patented platform focuses on T-cell epitope identification. This epitope discovery is applied to vaccine development in the cancer and infectious diseases field, as well as to protein epitope profiling and Immunotuning®.
The uniqueness of Epibase® resides in its capability to identify the T-cell epitopes for any collection of proteins from any biological source (viral, cancer or other), for all HLA types covering most of the human population (including Caucasian, Oriental and Afro-American). The approach allows to document and optimize leads such as vaccines and therapeutic proteins for any specific population.
Unlike previous generation learning-based methods, Epibase® can identify epitopes for those HLA sub-types for which little or no experimental data is available. In addition, the award-wining Epibase® has the intrinsic capacity to identify epitope sequence patterns that would not be recognized by learning-based tools.
For more information about Epibase® visit www.epibase.com
About CTC Laboratory Systems Corporation
CTC Laboratory Systems Corporation (Tokyo, Japan), a subsidiary of Itochu Techno-Solutions Corporation, is Japan’s leading provider of total solutions from target ID/VD to clinical trial for pharmaceutical, and a variety of solution for chemical, and food processing industries, as well as life sciences research institutions. Additional information on CTCLS can be found at http://www.ctcls.co.jp
Further information:
AlgoNomics N.V.
Philippe Stas
Chief Operating Officer
Technologiepark 4
B-9052 Gent – Belgium
Tel.: +32.(0)9.241.11.00
Fax.: +32.(0)9.241.11.02
Philippe.Stas@algonomics.com
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