Calmune Enters Into Research Collaboration With Crucell

Calmune has established an exclusive research collaboration with Crucell, which focuses on research development, production and marketing of vaccines, proteins and antibodies that prevent and/or treat infectious diseases.

As per the collaboration, Calmune will use SEBVI, a proprietary technology to prepare a panel of potent, high-affinity human monoclonal antibodies (hMabs) against infectious disease target. SEBVI allows natural, high-affinity, fully human antibodies against microbial targets to be efficiently recovered from Epstein Barr virus-transformed memory B cells,by exploiting the power of the human immune response.

Crucell has the option to exclusively license these hMabs for further evaluation as development candidates, and to develop any that meet its required profile. Calmune will receive payments from Crucell at different stages of the discovery and development process, as well as a royalty on sales of products that incorporate antibodies generated by Calmune.

Jaap Goudsmit, chief scientific officer of Crucell, said: “Calmune’s demonstrated technological expertise in the generation of potent human monoclonal antibodies is a valuable complement to Crucell’s existing research programs and opens the door to the development of new therapeutics for infectious diseases.”