ArGEN-X wins €1.3M grant for antibody platform

11 Nov 2009 | News

Grant

Antibody specialist arGEN-X BV, has announced that its newly formed R&D subsidiary arGEN-X BVBA has received a grant worth €1.3 million for the further development of its Simple antibody platform. The grant was awarded by the Institute for the Promotion of Innovation by Science and Technology in Flanders (IWT).

arGEN-X says its Simple (Superior Immunodiversity with Minimal Protein Lead Engineering) platform has the potential to discover novel monoclonal antibodies that combine unparalleled functional diversity against human disease targets with best-in-class human germline homology.

In the 12 months since the company was formed, it has delivered a robust proof of concept for the platform and progressed its lead programme, targeting inflammatory and oncology indications, to in vivo proof of concept.

Tim van Hauwermeiren, CEO, said, “The Simple Antibody platform has the potential to rapidly create new product candidates against novel therapeutic targets and targets where standard antibody approaches fail to generate optimal lead diversity.”

Hans de Haard, Chief Scientific Officer, said the Simple platform has the potential to set a new standard in terms of functional diversity when compared to existing technologies. “This IWT grant will allow us to further develop the key competitive features of the [...] platform and to initiate additional programmes”.

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