Oncimmune Holdings PLC Agreement with Cedars-Sinai to Profile COVID-19 (8535B)

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RNS Number : 8535B

Oncimmune Holdings PLC

13 October 2020

13 October 2020

Oncimmune Holdings plc

("Oncimmune" or the "Company")

Agreement with Cedars-Sinai to Profile Immune Response to COVID-19

Oncimmune Holdings plc (AIM: ONC.L), the leading global immunodiagnostics group, today announces that, following its announcement on 6 October that Oncimmune is being funded by the UK Government to develop a COVID-19 biomarker panel, the Company has signed a commercial agreement with Cedars-Sinai, California, USA, to provide antibody profiling in COVID-19 samples as biomarkers for this disease. Cedars-Sinai is a world-leading medical research organisation serving more than 1 million people each year in over 40 locations, with more than 4,500 physicians and nurses and 1,500 research projects in progress.

Under this agreement, Cedars-Sinai will provide Oncimmune with serum samples from staff exposed to or infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus. The project will identify biomarkers of the COVID-19 disease and compare these to a control set of healthy patient samples to be provided by Oncimmune. The project will seek to initially profile the antibodies of staff working at Cedars-Sinai hospitals to better understand the effects of the disease in healthcare workers.

On 6 October 2020, we announced Oncimmune's participation in the IMmunity Profiling of pAtients with COVID-19 for Therapy and Triage ("IMPACTT") programme to develop and validate an Infectious Disease NavigAID(TM) panel designed to predict COVID-19 disease severity and therapeutic response. This collaboration with Cedars-Sinai is the first commercial project to result from this IMPACTT programme.

Cedars-Sinai will also contribute novel antigens to the COVID-19 panel, and in return, will be the first academic partner to benefit from this IMPACTT programme. Oncimmune intends to continue to contract commercially with biopharmaceutical companies and academic organisations for the use of the COVID-19 panel to gain a deeper understanding of the immune response to the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

Adam M Hill, CEO of Oncimmune said: "We are delighted to be partnering with such a prestigious organisation as Cedars-Sinai on this important programme. Oncimmune is responding to the global call for innovations to support the fight against COVID-19 by leveraging our capabilities in immune profiling. In so doing we will build on our knowledge of the disease and support the development of vaccines and therapeutics. We expect to announce further development collaborations and contracts over the coming months to be followed by contracts with biopharmaceutical companies once the COVID-19 panel is fully validated."

For further information:

Oncimmune Holdings plc

Adam Hill, Chief Executive Officer

Matthew Hall, Chief Financial Officer

[e-mail]

Zeus Capital Limited (Nominated Adviser and Joint Broker)

Andrew Jones, Daniel Harris, Victoria Ayton

[phone]

N+1 Singer (Joint Broker)

Aubrey Powell, Harry Gooden, Iqra Amin, James Fischer

[phone]

WG Partners (Joint Broker)

David Wilson, Chris Lee

[phone]

Media enquiries:

FTI Consulting

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About Oncimmune

Our intimate understanding of the human immune system enables us to harness its sophisticated response to disease to detect cancer earlier and to support the development of better therapies.

The key to improving cancer survival is early detection and better selection for therapy. As a company, we are driven by our passion to improve cancer survival and give people extra time. Oncimmune's immunodiagnostic test, EarlyCDT(R) , can detect and help identify cancer on average four years earlier than standard clinical diagnosis.

The unique combination of our core technology and understanding of the immune system, powers our ImmunoINSIGHTS service; a proprietary platform that enables life science organisations to optimise drug development and delivery, leading to more effective, targeted as well as safer treatments for patients.

Oncimmune was founded in 2002 and launched its platform diagnostic technology in 2009, followed by the launch of its first commercial tests, EarlyCDT Lung and EarlyCDT Liver. To date, over 200,000 tests have been performed for patients worldwide. EarlyCDT Lung was also used in what is believed to be the largest randomised controlled trial for the early detection of lung cancer using biomarkers, the successful National Health Service (NHS) Early detection of Cancer of the Lung ("ECLS") trial of 12,208 high-risk smokers in Scotland. This trial demonstrated that EarlyCDT Lung reduced the incidence of patients with late-stage lung cancer or unclassified presentation at diagnosis, compared to standard clinical practice.

Oncimmune, headquartered at its laboratory facility in Nottingham, UK, has a discovery research centre in Dortmund, Germany and a partner representative office in Shanghai, China. Oncimmune joined the AIM Market of the London Stock Exchange in May 2016 under the ticker ONC.L

About Cedars-Sinai

Cedars-Sinai is a non-profit academic healthcare organization serving the diverse Los Angeles community and beyond. With pioneering medical research achievements, education programs defining the future of healthcare, and wide-ranging community benefit activities, Cedars-Sinai is setting new standards for quality and innovation in patient care. Founded in 1902 as a 12-bed hospital in the Angelino Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles, today Cedars-Sinai serves more than 1 million people each year in over 40 locations, with more than 4,500 physicians and nurses and 1,500 research projects in motion.

What is ImmunoINSIGHTS?

The ImmunoINSIGHTS service business leverages Oncimmune's technology platform and methodologies across multiple diseases, to offer life-science organisations actionable insights for therapies across the development and product lifecycle. Our core immune-profiling technology is underpinned by our library of over eight thousand immunogenic proteins, one of the largest of its kind. This helps identify trial participants and patients into clinically relevant subgroups, enabling development of targeted and more effective treatments.

What is SeroTag (TM) ?

Oncimmune's proprietary biomarker discovery engine, which is leveraged in our ImmunoINSIGHTS services to discover and validate novel biomarkers can help stratify patients in multiple cancer indications and with different autoimmune diseases.

This high-throughput, multiplex technology is based on one of the largest, in-house protein libraries, as well as a unique, ever-growing repository of disease data for indications including, but not limited to, autoimmune diseases and cancer. As a result, SeroTag is helping to address and monitor a number of challenges currently hindering the successful development and broader application of both cancer immunotherapies and treatments for autoimmune diseases.

The platform is being applied to discover and validate biomarkers and develop precision diagnostic tools from minimally invasive liquid biopsies. SeroTag analyses autoantibodies-some of the most stable analytes-and is used most frequently for the identification of IgG isoforms, in addition to IgM and IgA, from just a few drops of serum.

The SeroTag platform acts as the primary discovery engine that feeds into the creation of Oncimmune's NavigAID disease-specific stratification panels-precision medicine tools which are enabling patient and disease stratification and support therapeutic development.

What is NavigAID(TM)?

Oncimmune's NavigAID arrays are thoroughly validated containing well defined antigen panels, largely encompassing markers of interest for each of the disease types being investigated.

Our portfolio of panels includes out-of-the-box NavigAID arrays for immuno-oncology and autoimmune diseases. These validated panels are frequently used as the starting point for collaborations with partners to add further markers of interest to their specific therapy and its specific indication.

For more information, visit www.oncimmune.com

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October 13, 2020 02:00 ET (06:00 GMT)