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The Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute have agreed to sell the rights to antibodies designed to be used to protect against and fight influenza.
Swiss pharmaceutical giant Roche and its wholly owned subsidiary, Genentech, acquired the rights to manufacture, develop and market the antibodies for flu viruses, for an undisclosed sum. Dana-Farber and Sanford-Burnham will receive license fees and milestone payments and royalties if treatments or diagnostics result from the antibodies.
The antibodies target viruses that include the strains for the current seasonal and H1N1 influenzas. Genentech and Roche also have a non-exclusive right to manufacture, develop and market diagnostic tests for group 1 influenza.
The discovery of the antibodies was a joint venture of Boston-based Dana-Farber, the Sanford-Burnham medical research institute in California and Florida, and the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The team demonstrated that the newly identified antibodies attach to a different part of the viruses than current influenza vaccines, according to published reports in peer-reviewed journals last year. The researchers believe their method makes it more difficult for the viruses to mutate and therefore evade vaccines.
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