Gilead, AbTherx expand antibody discovery agreement

AbTherx announced the expansion of a previous agreement with Gilead (GILD) Sciences to develop novel antibody discovery technologies and discover therapeutic antibodies for Gilead-selected targets. Under the initial agreement in June 2023, AbTherx received worldwide rights to Atlas Mice, a suite of transgenic mouse technologies acquired by Gilead, and committed to a multi-year, multi-target research collaboration. In just over a year, AbTherx established a research center and developed transgenic mouse technologies that express the full diversity of human antibody HC and k-LC repertoires and enable the development of bispecific antibodies through a novel binary fixed light chain. AbTherx is also continuing development of a technology that uses natural mechanisms to generate long CDRH3 antibodies to address challenging drug targets that was part of the original agreement. Under the expanded agreement, AbTherx will develop and receive worldwide rights to additional transgenic technologies and broaden the multi-year, multi-target research collaboration to include the performance of additional therapeutic antibody research programs.