Ligand Pharmaceuticals has entered a worldwide OmniAb platform license agreement with Glenmark Pharmaceuticals. Under the license, Glenmark will be able to use the full OmniAb platform including OmniChicken, OmniRat, OmniMouse and OmniFlic to discover fully human mono- and multispecific antibodies. Ligand is eligible to receive annual platform access payments, development and regulatory milestone payments and tiered royalties for each product incorporating an OmniAb antibody. Glenmark will be responsible for all costs related to the programs.
“This agreement provides Glenmark access to our transgenic animal technology platform that is the only to include three separate species in a single license. This diversity in species is expected to provide a wider repertoire of therapeutic antibodies than a single-species technology,” said John Higgins, Chief Executive Officer of Ligand. “This is the first new OmniAb partnership to include OmniChicken in addition to OmniRat, OmniMouse and OmniFlic. Ligand’s acquisition of OmniChicken demonstrated its commitment to provide the best antibody-discovery technologies to its current and future partners.”
OmniAb is a three-species transgenic-animal platform consisting of four different technologies used for producing mono- and multispecific human therapeutic antibodies. OmniRat is the industry’s first human monoclonal antibody technology based on rats. It has a complete immune system with a diverse antibody repertoire and generates antibodies with human idiotypes as effectively as wild-type animals make rat antibodies. OmniMouse is a transgenic mouse that complements OmniRat and expands epitope coverage. OmniFlic is an engineered rat with a fixed light chain for development of bispecific, fully human antibodies. OmniChicken is the industry’s first human monoclonal antibody technology based on chickens. The four technologies use patented technology, have broad freedom to operate and deliver fully human antibodies with high affinity, specificity, expression, solubility and stability.