Algonomics gets €900K grant for IWT

Funding

Algonomics has announced that it has been awarded €900,000 research funding from the Flemish Institute for the Promotion of Innovation by Science and Technology (IWT). The money will fund a programme of research with Søren Buus of Copenhagen University and Roberto Mallone of Inserm in France.

This two year funding will drive further development of Algonomics’ Epibase platform for predicting immunogenicity of biotherapeutics. Epibase is widely used in the biopharma industry to estimate the relative risk that any particular protein therapeutic will cause an undesired immune response.

Buus, who is head of the laboratory of Experimental Immunology at Copenhagen, said, “In collaboration with Algonomics and Inserm, we will generate the reagents needed to detect and manipulate specific T cells [...] involved in detecting foreign threats to our body and in regulating the resulting immune response [which] hold great potential for future immunotherapy of infections and cancer.”

By combining in vitro and in silico approaches, the accuracy of pre-clinical immunogenicity assessment has strongly improved over the past few years. This research project is specifically geared towards a better understanding of the interaction between the T-cell receptor and MHC peptide-complexes.

Mallone that said the complementary expertise put together with this project holds great promise to further develop epitope prediction tools, and is an example of “fruitful exchange between academia and biotech industry in the European landscape.”

Philippe Stas, CEO of Algonomics, said, “This collaboration with top-notch research groups in the field of T-cell biology and immunology, allows our team to exchange know-how and valuable insights in the mechanisms driving immune responses and immunogenicity.”