BioCopy AG and Immatics enter into a collaboration to characterize T cell receptor - peptide-HLA interactions

BASEL, Switzerland and TÜBINGEN, Germany, July 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- BioCopy AG announces a collaboration with Immatics N.V. (NASDAQ: IMTX) "Immatics" in the field of characterization of T cell receptors (TCRs). T cell receptors and their interactions with peptide-HLA complexes (human leukocyte antigen) play a crucial role for the human immune system in the recognition of tumors, among other things.

Cancer represents one of the most frequent causes of death and thus one of the greatest challenges of modern medicine. Therefore, it is not only necessary but crucial to develop advanced therapies. For this reason, BioCopy has developed an innovative technology that enables high-throughput screening of T cell receptors for binding to a wide variety of peptide-HLA complexes. With this technology BioCopy is contributing a safety screening for novel TCR-based cancer cell therapies.

The extension of BioCopy's highly innovative screening platform to provide insight into T cell responses in addition to B-cell responses is a valuable milestone for BioCopy. During the last months, BioCopy has been working to develop this globally unique screening, and a patent application has already been filed on the technology. The goal of this collaboration is to enable the characterization of more than 5,000 different TCR-peptide-HLA interactions simultaneously. This ultra-high-throughput approach could significantly accelerate the development of T cell based cancer therapies by facilitating large pre-clinical safety screenings.

Rainer Böhm, Member of the Board of Directors of BioCopy comments: "With its newly patented technology for T cell therapies, BioCopy completes its innovative molecular-interaction screening platform and is one of only a few companies in the world to support targeted therapy development via both pathways of the immune response (B- and T cell response). With its innovative technology platform, BioCopy addresses two booming billion-dollar markets - infectious diseases and oncology."

Immatics combines the discovery of true targets for cancer immunotherapies with the development of the right T cell receptors with the goal of enabling a robust and specific T cell response against these targets. The BioCopy technology will be implemented as part of Immatics' XCEPTOR® platform, which delivers highly specific TCRs for the development of Adoptive Cell Therapies and TCR Bispecifics.

"Making sure that our TCRs do not cross-react with other tissues than the targeted cancer is very important in the development of our TCR-based immunotherapies", says Dominik Maurer, Vice President and Global Head of Immunology at Immatics. "BioCopy's screening platform and expertise has produced promising early results. We are looking forward to combining their screening platform with our XCEPTOR® platform to further advance our pre-clinical product candidates and deliver the power of T cells to cancer patients."

About BioCopy:

BioCopy AG is a young biotech startup with headquarters in Basel (Switzerland) and a research facility in Emmendingen, Germany. BioCopy's patented technology portfolio enables a unique label-free measurement of molecular interactions, applied for diagnostics, vaccines, lead and hit screening and was now expanded also to HLA and TCR screening.

BioCopy's award winning team of more than 20 experts in the field of biology, physics, engineering, microsystems technology and economics is complemented by renowned board members. Especially Rainer Boehm (ex-interim CEO and Chief Commercial and Medical Affairs Officer Novartis Pharma), Prof. Dr. Alexander von Gabain (co-founder of Intercell AG, now Valneva SE), and Pascal Brenneisen (ex-CEO Novartis Switzerland).

Contact International:
Manfred Claassens, Presse BioCopy; +49 162 264 44 61; presse@biocopy.de  

Contact Switzerland:
Barbara Ryter, Presse BioCopy; +41 43 501 33 06; presse@biocopy.ch

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