Harbour Antibodies Announces 25th License to Its Transgenic Mouse Platforms for Next Generation Monoclonal Antibody Discovery 

Licenses Highlight Increasing Recognition of Platforms’ Potential

Rotterdam, The Netherlands and Cambridge, MA, September 18, 2015 – Harbour Antibodies BV today announced the signing of five new licenses to the company’s patented transgenic mouse platforms to discover next generation, high affinity, therapeutic human antibody products. These new licenses bring to 25 the total number of licenses by pharma and biotech companies, as well as academic organizations. The recent group of licensees includes MD Anderson Cancer Center and several international biotech companies and includes licenses to Harbour’s heavy chain only and conventional antibody generating transgenic mouse platforms.

“The accelerated pace of agreements underscores increasing recognition within the industry that our platforms are powerful tools for rapid and efficient antibody discovery,” said Frank Grosveld, Ph.D., scientific founder, Chief Scientific Officer and Director of Harbour Antibodies. “The growing number of licenses also reflects the strength of our intellectual property position.”

Harbour has exclusive rights to two transgenic mouse platforms for which it offers licenses. One of the mouse strains is for generating human heavy chain only antibodies (HCAb) and the other strain is for human conventional heavy and light chain antibodies (H2L2). The HCAb mice enable the development of antibody fragment-based therapeutics with favorable drug-like properties that are differentiated from conventional antibodies.   The H2L2 transgenic mice produce classical two heavy and two light immunoglobulin chain antibodies with fully human variable regions. Several Harbour licensees have access to both platforms.

About Harbour Antibodies

Harbour Antibodies is a privately held company founded to commercialize the transgenic mouse platforms developed at the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, the largest medical center in the Netherlands. Harbour offers for license two strains of transgenic mice that can be used to generate human therapeutic antibodies: (1) mice that generate traditional tetrameric antibodies comprised of two heavy chains and two light chains (H2L2) and (2) mice that generate novel “heavy chain only” antibodies (HCAb). Both proprietary transgenic mouse platforms are protected by issued and pending patents. Licensees include Eli Lilly and Company, Pfizer, ShangPharma, other multinational companies, emerging biotech companies, and academic institutions. For additional information on the Harbour Antibodies platform discovery technology or partnering strategies please visit http://www.harbourantibodies.com.

Contact:

Timothy Miller, Senior Manager of Business Development and Alliances
(857) 214-0976
timothy.miller@harbourbiomed.com