Servier and BioInvent International announce cancer alliance

Servier has announced a new agreement with BioInvent International that will see the companies conduct joint research into a new antibody treatment for cancer.

The alliance will see Servier engage BioInvent to screen its proprietary n-CoDeR library for antibodies specific to an undisclosed oncology target, as well as accessing its in-house pre-clinical capacities to choose a candidate for development.

Under the terms of the deal, BioInvent will be granted a licensing fee, research support and potential milestone payments of more than 11 million euros (91.6 million pounds), plus sales royalties.

It is hoped that the research will lead to the creation of one of the first monoclonal antibody therapies targeting tumour cell metabolism, an innovative treatment avenue with strong potential.

Dr Emmanuel Canet, president of Servier, said: "With this new collaboration Servier will reinforce its capacity of using biologics to address very innovative targets for treating cancer and we are looking forward to benefiting from Bioinvent's experience."

This comes after a similar research alliance with MacroGenics was announced by Servier last month.