Leidos and Biosortia Pharmaceuticals Execute Memorandum of Understanding
Wednesday, August 16, 2017
Leidos, a FORTUNE 500® science and technology company, has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Biosortia Pharmaceuticals to explore creating a new business relationship with a focus on identifying and advancing immuno-oncology and other immunotherapeutic opportunities.
Both companies offer existing and future assets in the immunotherapeutic space that will enable them to deliver de-risked assets to a future pharmaceutical partner for development. The companies' assets include compounds derived from microbiome sources, screening assays, and scientific expertise that will focus on moving assets to investigational new drug clinical research for development by the partner. Technologies involved include Biosortia's proprietary microbiome harvesting and mining capabilities and Leidos' big data analytics. Leidos has advanced various immune checkpoint inhibitor peptides that provide unique differentiation from the current therapeutic monoclonal antibodies. When coupled with Leidos' data analytics technologies and capabilities and Biosortia's harvesting and mining technologies, these assets represent a unique opportunity to accelerate the process of identifying and maturing a new class of immunotherapies.
"The high cost of de-risked assets due to the dismal success rates of combinatorial chemistry and the ever-emerging complexities of genomics has encouraged us to pursue a unique and validated approach," said Ross Youngs, Chief Executive Officer of San Diego-based of Biosortia Pharmaceuticals "We have created technologies to deeply explore various microbiome habitats for new cell to cell signaling, which is more closely related to previously successful drug discovery approaches via culturing, that have delivered directly, indirectly or inspirational more than 50% of drugs on the shelf."
"Combining deep analytics and genomics with novel chemistry from the microbiome provides a platform to uncover and create the next generation of immunological drugs," added Matt Vaughan, Senior Vice President of Health Products and Solutions in the Leidos Health Group.
