NEW YORK – On Monday, clinical-stage immune-oncology imaging company ImaginAb said it signed a multi-year non-exclusive license agreement with AstraZeneca, which will allow the drugmaker to use its CD8 ImmunoPET technology in clinical trials in North America and Europe.
ImaginAb's technology uses radiologic imaging to track whether CD8-expressing T cells have infiltrated a patient's tumor. The technology could potentially enable the development of personalized treatments.
In January, ImaginAb pushed forward with a Phase II trial of its antibody-based CD8 T-cell imaging technology in collaboration with the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. In this trial, ImaginAB will image patients at baseline and after they have received immunotherapy, measuring how CD8-positive T-cell distribution predicts response, as well as how it changes between these two time points and how well that change corresponds to clinical response.
The imaging technology under this new agreement will help AstraZeneca image CD8 cells in patients and analyze data for research and novel immunotherapy development.
ImaginAb will receive license fees and other contingent payments. This agreement follows the recently signed pre-competitive alliance announced in October 2019 between AstraZeneca, ImaginAb, Pfizer, and Takeda to clinically advance ImaginAb's CD8 ImmunoPET technology.