Oncimmune Holdings plc (LON:ONC), the leading global immunodiagnostics group, today announced the signing of a new commercial contract with Verily Life Sciences LLC, an Alphabet company, focusing on the autoantibody profiling of patients who have had the COVID-19 infection and have gone on to develop long lasting symptoms lasting more than four weeks (“Long COVID” also known as post-acute sequelae SARS-CoV-2 infection (“PASC”)).
Under the terms of this new contract, Oncimmune will utilise its recently validated infectious disease panel of biomarkers, developed under the IMmunity Profiling of pAtients with COVID-19 for Therapy and Triage (“IMPACTT”) programme, to evaluate whether autoantibodies, which are present early in the COVID-19 infection, are associated with the development of Long COVID. Furthermore, the Company’s infectious disease panel will also be used to assess whether these autoantibodies remain elevated in Long COVID patients during their period of recovery.
Should this initial discovery phase prove successful, both Oncimmune and Verily have retained the rights to commercialise the resultant intellectual property, including the filing of patent applications for the development of a companion diagnostic.
Dr Adam M Hill, CEO of Oncimmune said: “The real impact on society of Long COVID is only beginning to be understood. Oncimmune is a leader in infectious disease serological antibody profiling, and therefore this partnership with Verily, utilising Oncimmune’s validated infectious disease panel, will seek to identify autoantibodies which are indicators for Long COVID. It is yet another exemplar of Oncimmune’s leading position in autoimmune profiling.
“As is typical with Oncimmune’s contracts, there is potential for the initial discovery work in autoantibodies to progress onto the identification of intellectual property rights, and to the development of viable commercial companion diagnostic devices.”
