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Strategic collaboration agreement reached between Biocytogen and Berkeley Lights for second Beacon Optofluidic system
September 14, 2020, Beijing | Beijing Biocytogen Co., Ltd. (“Biocytogen”) reached a collaboration with Berkeley Lights Inc. (“Berkeley Lights”) on the introduction of the second Beacon Optofluidic system. The system will be used in the development of antibody therapeutics to further strengthen the overall drug discovery capabilities of Biocytogen. The two parties will draw on each other’s strengths and sincerely collaborate in the exploration of more efficient antibody discovery solutions to better meet the needs of patients around the world.
Based on the collaboration agreement, Berkeley Lights will provide versatile, adaptable and flexible solutions in the use of its Beacon system to meet Biocytogen’s diverse needs in research and development of new antibody drugs.
Biocytogen is committed to being a headstream of innovative drugs, with its fully human antibody RenMabTM Mouse of proprietary intellectual property, and the unique and efficient one-stop new drug development solutions. The vision of Project Integrum, which is an important part of Biocytogen’s new drug development product pipelines, is to revolutionize antibody therapeutic discovery by creating over a thousand targets knocked out RenMab™ Mice to cover essentially all non-lethal knockout of targets. By immunizing these target-knockout mice, antibodies recognizing more epitopes with cross-species binding capability can be obtained. The corresponding lead antibodies will be obtained using Biocytogen’s in vitro and in vivo screening platforms. With the introduction of Beacon Optofluidic system from Berkeley Lights for single B cell screening, combined with the RenMab™ Mouse fully human antibody platform, Biocytogen has greatly improved the efficiency of antibody discovery, compressed the timeline of new drug development, and accelerated the overall speed of bringing new therapeutics to the patients around the world. With the implementation of Project Integrum, Biocytogen has been acquiring the capability of continuously providing new drug targets and lead molecules that have been validated by primary disease animal models of different species. Biocytogen is thus far the first biotech company in the Greater China region that has adopted two Beacon systems for antibody drug development. The parallel use of two Beacon systems meets the needs of drug development aiming at a large number of different targets, and provides more candidate molecules in the early stage of antibody drug development, improving the success rate of drug development through screening for lead antibodies with high druggable potential.
“With the global spread of COVID-19, people have urgent needs for rapid drug development, and the world has placed higher expectations on drug development institutions. We believe the Berkeley Lights Platform offers the most rapid path to discovery of functional antibody therapeutics to the industry.” said Dr. Yue Geng, the Head of Asia Pacific at Berkeley Lights. “Biocytogen is the first biotech company in the Greater China region to adopt two Beacon Optofluidic systems. We are very pleased to further deepen our collaboration with Biocytogen and the installation of the second Beacon system shows Biocytogen’s visionary planning and continuous investment in the early stage development of antibody therapeutics.”
“With the increasing global demand of biologic drugs and rapid development of immunotherapies, our collaboration with Berkeley Lights is of great significance.” said Dr. Yi Yang, CSO of Biocytogen, “Biocytogen has been continuously exploring faster and more efficient new drug development strategies, and is very willing to work with global partners to solve technical bottlenecks in the discovery and development of biologic drugs. The Berkeley Lights Optofluidic system can be used accurately and rapidly in single cell level immunology research. By further strengthening Biocytogen’s arsenal and promoting the construction of Biocytogen’s new drug discovery platform, the collaboration of the two parties will accelerate Biocytogen’s implementation of Project Integrum and assist Biocytogen to become a headstream of innovative drugs in the world.”
ABOUT BIOCYTOGEN
Biocytogen is a global biotech company that drives the research and development of new drugs with innovative technologies. The company is committed to becoming a global headstream of new drugs and bringing the benefit to the patients around the world as its mission. Based on the fully human antibody RenMabTM, RenLiteTM, and RenNanoTM Mice with proprietary independent intellectual property rights, Biocytogen has organically integrated its single-cell antibody discovery platform, a highly-efficient gene editing model development platform, a large-scale animal model supply platform, a fast in vitro and in vivo screening platform, and strong clinical development capabilities to form a unique new drug R&D system that covers the entire drug development process. With the implementation of the large-scale antibody drug R&D Project Integrum, Biocytogen will work jointly with global partners to accelerate new drug discovery and development. Biocytogen is headquartered in Beijing, with branches in Shanghai, Haimen, Boston, etc. Its wholly owned subsidiary, Eucure Biopharma, focuses on clinical stages of drug development.
ABOUT BERKELEY LIGHTS
Berkeley Lights, Inc. (Nasdaq: BLI) is a leading Digital Cell Biology company focused on enabling and accelerating the rapid development and commercialization of biotherapeutics and other cell-based products for our customers. The Berkeley Lights Platform captures deep phenotypic, functional, and genotypic information for thousands of single cells in parallel and can also deliver the live biology customers desire in the form of the best cells. Its platform is a fully integrated, end-to-end solution, comprising proprietary consumables, including our OptoSelect™ chips and reagent kits, advanced automation systems, and application software. We developed the Berkeley Lights Platform to provide the most advanced environment for rapid functional characterization of single cells at scale, the goal of which is to establish an industry standard for our customers throughout their cell-based product value chain.
The Berkeley Lights Platform and Beacon system are FOR RESEARCH USE ONLY. Not for use in diagnostic procedures.