Leidos and Biosortia Pharma explore business relationship

US companies Leidos (NYSE: LDOS) and privately-held Biosortia Pharmaceuticals have signed a Memorandum of Understanding  (MoU) 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.