Calixar is providing Regeneron exclusive rights to its technology and expertise. Regeneron plans to work on developing antibodies against an undisclosed target in several different therapeutic areas.
Calixar, based in Lyon France, announced it had inked a licensing deal with Regeneron Pharmaceuticals.
There are few specifics about the licensing agreement. Calixar is providing Regeneron exclusive rights to its technology and expertise. Regeneron plans to work on developing antibodies against an undisclosed target in several different therapeutic areas.
No financial details were provided either, although Calixar apparently is receiving an upfront payment from Regeneron and is eligible for various milestone payments.
Calixar’s technology platform allows the company to isolate the full length and pure to highly pure membrane proteins while keeping their structure and function intact. The types of membrane proteins include GPCRs, ion channels, transporters, receptors and viral proteins.
Once isolated, the membrane proteins can be used for antibody development, vaccine formulation and drug discovery.
About three weeks ago, Calixar signed a collaborative research agreement with Thermo Fisher Scientific. Thermo Fisher will use its technology, including ExpiCHO and Expi293 GnTI-, inducible, and inducible GnTI- cell lines, to create difficult-to-express membrane protein targets. Calixar will then step in and use its tech platform to solubilize, stabilize and structurally and functionally characterize the targets.
Calixar notes, “Membrane proteins are critical targets for drug discovery. It is therefore important to produce them while maintaining their structural and functional integrities without having to stabilize them by mutagenesis, truncation and protein fusion.”
It added, “the collaboration with Thermo Fisher is intended to generate valuable tools to enable fundamental mechanistic studies as well as associated discovery programs such as Fragment-Based Drug Discovery (FBDD), Structure-Based Drug Discovery (SBDD), vaccine and antibody discovery.”
Calixar has an extensive list of academic and corporate partners, including University of London, the University of Oxford, the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative, Advanced Bioscience Laboratories, Molecular Dimensions and others.
Of the deal with Regeneron, Emmanuel Dejean, Calixar’s chief executive officer, stated, “This agreement is a key milestone for our collaboration with Regeneron as well as for our broader approach of using the best innovations to achieve the best biochemistry. It confirms the biopharma industry’s focus on fully-native, functional therapeutic targets for the development of high-quality antibodies and lead candidates with the optimal chance of becoming future blockbusters that address unmet medical needs.”
Calixar was founded in 2011 by Dejean, Pierre Falson, Research Director at the French National Research Center, and its first investor was INP Entreprise. A year later it brought in $1.2 million from regional angel investors, Health Angels Rhone-Alpes, Veymont Finance, Grenoble Angels, Savoie Angels and one venture capital firm, Siparex.
In 2015, the company opened an office in Cambridge, Mass. and brought in $1.13 million in a second round of funding with historical investors to out-license its isolation technologies. A year later it received a three-year grant from the French Inter-Ministry Fund to develop a new vaccine against Chikungunya. It also launched a shared laboratory, CHEM2STAB, with the University of Avignon.
In 2017, the company published several peer-reviewed scientific articles in collaboration with AstraZeneca, InMed, IGBMC and IBCP. It also launched a catalogue of products and signs its first commercial contracts, including with Sapphire North America and G-Biosciences, to distribute its membrane proteins and reagents.
