BeiGene will utilise Nona’s Harbour Mice platform as part of the agreement.
BeiGene and Nona Biosciences have announced an agreement to expand their strategic collaboration for antibody discovery.
The collaboration will allow BeiGene to utilise Nona’s Harbour Mice platform – a fully human transgenic mouse platform – to further improve therapeutic antibody discovery efficiency and flexibility.
BeiGene first obtained the rights to use the proprietary Harbour Mice H2L2 platform for multiple antibody programmes in 2018 as part of the now-expanded collaboration.
Harbour Mice works to generate fully human monoclonal antibodies in classical two light and two heavy chain (H2L) formats and heavy chain only (HCAb) formats.
The H2L platform allows mice to bear fully human immunoglobulin genes with robust B cell development and antibody maturation.
The HCAb platform is the world’s first human HCAb transgenic mouse platform that works to generate fully human-heavy chain-only antibodies. It allows the development of various formats, including single-domain antibodies, bi- and multi-specific antibodies, antibody-drug conjugates (ADC), CAR-T cells, or diagnostic and therapeutic products from VH domains.
“We are delighted to broaden our collaboration with BeiGene on antibody discovery. Our platform has enabled biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies as well as academia to accelerate innovative drug discovery for more than a decade,” said Jingsong Wang, chairman of Nona Biosciences, a wholly owned HBM Holdings subsidiary.
“BeiGene has been a long-term partner for us, and partnership expansion is emblematic of Nona’s accumulated knowledge and expertise in drug discovery,” said Wang.
In 2022, Nona entered into a collaboration with DualityBio, granting exclusive rights of its monoclonal antibodies for specific tumours to DualityBio to develop the world’s first-in-class ADC.
BeiGene later entered the collaboration with DualityBio in July 2023, alongside Nona, to acquire an exclusive option for a global clinical and commercial license to an investigational, preclinical ADC therapy for patients with select solid tumours.
