Touchlight and Odimma Therapeutics Announce Clinical Material Supply Agreement to Develop Personalised Cancer Therapy Utilising Doggybone DNA

Touchlight and Odimma have entered into an agreement to develop and supply clinical material for Odimma’s neoantigen program

HAMPTON, England--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Touchlight, a biotechnology company pioneering enzymatic DNA production to enable genetic medicines, today announces a development and supply agreement with Odimma Therapeutics, a French biotech company focusing on personalised cancer immunotherapy.

The agreement focuses on the provision of clinical material for use in Odimma’s oncological neoantigen program. Through the deal, Odimma will gain access to Touchlight’s proprietary doggybone DNA (dbDNA™) vector technology, providing them with a clinical supply of personalised dbDNA™, to support and underpin the development of their candidate immunotherapy cancer treatment. The program is expected to start clinical enrolment in 2023.

Odimma’s approach of harnessing the ability of the patient’s own immune system to specifically recognize non-self-targets displayed by tumour cells represents a step change in the field of immune oncology and opens new avenues for the treatment of difficult to target tumours.

The development of the neoantigen products required for the therapy has faced unique challenges, including lead time to obtain GMP DNA and complex supply chains. Touchlight’s enzymatic production process, with its 5-day manufacturing process, will therefore strongly support Odimma in its program development. This will also allow Odimma’s clinical study to commence promptly for the benefit of patients.

Touchlight’s doggybone DNA is a minimal, linear, double stranded, covalently closed DNA vector which is produced through an enzymatic manufacturing process. It can accommodate genes of interest of more than 20kb and is linearly scalable, making it highly adaptable to support a range of genetic medicines and is ideal for the development of mRNA vaccines, therapeutics, gene therapies and beyond.

Karen Fallen, CEO, Touchlight commented: “We are delighted to be supporting Odimma on this ground-breaking program. Innovation in enzymatic DNA manufacturing is enabling advancements such as Odimma’s Immunotherapy program to deliver treatments to critically ill patients. With a rapid timeline to GMP and high-fidelity process, doggybone DNA is helping to overcome existing industry bottlenecks and the challenges associated with plasmid DNA.”

Jean-Marc Limacher, MD, Chairman of Odimma Therapeutics said: “The agreement between Odimma and Touchlight is an important step forward to secure Odimma’s clinical development. Not only is Touchlight’s technology producing genetic material with very favourable characteristics for a clinical use but also in a timeframe extremely adapted to a personalized immunotherapy in oncology.

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About Touchlight
Touchlight is a privately-owned company based in London, U.K., focused on the provision of DNA services and manufacture of enzymatically produced novel DNA formats, such as doggybone DNA (dbDNA™) to enable the development of genetic medicines. Touchlight DNA Services provide rapid, enzymatic DNA development and manufacturing for all advanced therapy production, including mRNA, viral and non-viral gene therapy and DNA API. dbDNA is a minimal, linear, covalently closed structure, which eliminates bacterial sequences. Touchlight’s revolutionary enzymatic production platform enables unprecedented speed, scale, and the ability to target genes with a size and complexity that is impossible with current technologies. Clients can be supported from pre-clinical through development and supply, to licencing and tech transfer for use in-house.
Find out more at www.touchlight.com

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About Odimma Therapeutics
Odimma is a biotech company based in France with a unique approach in active personalised cancer immunotherapy. By harnessing the ability of the patient’s own immune system to specifically recognise non-self-targets displayed by the tumour, also called neoantigens, Odimma has designed a potent next-generation personalised immunisation platform. This proprietary platform has demonstrated its ability to induce a powerful cellular immune response against non-self-antigens as well as a strong anti-tumoural effect in several tumour bearing mice models. By design the immunisation product can be produced in a short period of time and with no limits in the number of neoantigens to be targeted.
For more information, visit www.odimma-therapeutics.com