BioNTech signs up to $790 million 3-year deal with Crescendo

Using up some of the billions of dollars the German biotech has earned through its successful COVID-19 cooperation with Pfizer (NYSE: PFE) to expand its pipeline, BioNTech (Nasdaq: BNTX) has now announced a multi-target discovery collaboration with privately-held UK immuno-oncology company Crescendo Biologics to develop novel immunotherapies for the treatment of patients with cancer and other diseases. The initial term of the discovery collaboration is three years.

Crescendo will contribute its unique, proprietary, transgenic platform to deliver fully human heavy-chain antibody domains (Humabody VH) against targets nominated by BioNTech. Humabodies represent a novel class of therapeutics that retain the high-affinity binding and specificity of conventional therapeutic antibodies while providing additional advantages such as small size, enhanced tissue and tumor penetration, stability and molecular simplicity due to the lack of a light chain. In particular, the modular nature of Humabodies make them ideally suited for the development of multi-target immunotherapies.

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