BioNTech AG inked a deal with Munich, Germany’s MAB Discovery GmbH to acquire MAB’s operational antibody generation unit. No financial details were disclosed.
BioNTech AG, located in Mainz, Germany, inked a deal with Munich, Germany’s MAB Discovery GmbH to acquire MAB’s operational antibody generation unit. No financial details were disclosed.
BioNTech will acquire all assets, employees and “proprietary know-how” for monoclonal antibody (mAb) generation. MAB will keep ownership and all rights to its preclinical development pipeline and its existing third-party service agreements.
The two companies have been collaborating for more than five years, where MAB generated antibodies using its technology, which is then further developed by BioNTech.
“Having exclusive access to MAB Discovery’s finely-tuned proprietary know-how dramatically expands BioNTech’s targeting ligand repertoire and enables us to directly, rapidly and efficiently produce new mAb candidates,” stated Ugur Sahin, chief executive officer and co-founder of BioNTech. “The technology will be utilized with our existing proprietary platforms including RiboMABS, a platform for generating a novel class of mRNA-encoded antibody drug candidates.”
BioNTech is the largest, privately-held biopharma company in Europe. The company has seven corporate partnerships with Roche’s Genentech, Pfizer, Genmab, Eli Lilly, Sanofi, Genevant and Bayer Health. It was founded in 2008. Its majority shareholders include the Struengmann Family Office, Fidelity Management & Research Company, Invus, Janus Henderson Investors, MIG Fonds, Redmile Group, Salvia and several European family offices.
MAB Discovery was founded in 2010 by Stephan Fischer. It too has worked with Roche Biologicals. MAB Discovery is part of the SPARKLE consortium, which receives three years of funding from the EUSTARS program. There are five partners in the consortium.
The consortium develops and performs the preclinical validation of a new therapeutic approach against antibiotic-resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae (ARKP) infections, a common hospital-acquired infection.
“We are dedicated to deliver a set of novel molecules for the treatment and cure of severe infections,” stated Fischer in April 2018, when the consortium was announced. “Being a part of the SPARKLE consortium broadens the scope of applications and underscores again the high performance of our rabbit-based antibody discovery platform.”
The other companies in the SPARKLE consortium include Evaxion Biotech, Pepscan Therapeutics Bv, Karolinska Institute, and Preclin Biosystems AG. The three-year funding for the project is 2,999,280 euros.
Eurostars is the first European funding and support program designed to support the niche market of research-performing small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in innovative research-and-development projects. It is co-funded from the national budgets of 36 Eurostars countries and by the European Union via Horizon 2020. The countries that take part earmark funds for their participants by way of their national funding rules and procedures.
Of the deal with BioNTech, Fisher stated, “This transaction will ensure the further development and expansion of MAB Discovery’s unique mAb generation platform. We are glad to see that our proprietary technology has already generated unique mAbs for BioNTech and we are proud that MAB Discovery’s operational unit will become an integral part of BioNTech and its future value generation. MAB Discovery will now focus on further developing its proprietary mAbs with external partners.”
The acquisition and transition of the unit are expected to be completed at the end of the first quarter of 2019.
