Germany's Affimed Therapeutics has spun out its antibody discovery activities to form a new company. AbCheck, to be based in the Czech Republic, will continue Affimed's current discovery work and will also offer antibody discovery and engineering expertise to biotech and pharma companies. AbCheck will create customized antibodies for therapeutic applications.
Freed from discovery activities, Affimed will focus all its energy on preparing a Phase I study of AFM 13, a treatment for Hodgkin's lymphoma. The clinical trial is expected to begin in the first half of 2010. The company also has further advanced preclinical programs in the works for non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, solid tumors, autoimmune diseases and asthma.
"With our broad preclinical product portfolio Affimed is about to enter clinical development with the first, unique TandAb antibodies. With the company's transition into a clinical development organization, we feel it is necessary to further focus our business model," explains Dr. Thomas Hecht, chairman of the supervisory board of Affimed. "At the same time, this transition frees up new potential for the commercialization of our discovery expertise and a broad proprietary technology portfolio, which we will exploit further with our new antibody discovery spinout AbCheck."
- check out Affimed's release