GenScript plays piper bringing transgenic rats to Asia

The New Jersey CRO (contract researching organisation) has been promoting its discovery platform for fully human therapeutic antibodies, developed through a partnership with Open Monoclonal Technology (OMT), to companies in the US over the past few weeks.

GenScript now intends to take this technology and offer it to potential clients in China, Japan and South Korea.

“GenScript sees numerous unmet medical needs and market demands in Asia,”​ Dr. Chuan-Chu Chou, Senior Vice President of Corporate Development at Gendcript, told Outsourcing-Pharma.com. “The company is determined to become a major partner to the pharmaceutical industry in Asia.”​

He added that the opportunity for GenScript to do business was expanding rapidly within the Asian market and is keen to capitalise on pharmaceutical research and development growth in the region.

“With unprecedented growth in financial power, technological advances, and operation efficiency, GenScript foresees Asia playing a dominant role in revolutionising the discovery of human therapeutics.”​

OmniRat​

The CRO develops therapeutic drugs for the pharmaceutical industry and late last year teamed up with OMT to offer its new discovery service. While therapeutic targets will be selected by its clients, Genscript will provide antibody services in unison with OMT’s humanised transgenic animal platform, OmniRat.

OmniRat enables developers to skip the need to humanise animal-derived antibodies by using transgenic rats to produce monoclonal antibodies. The genetically engineered rat offers an unrestricted alternative to mouse-based technology in making monoclonal antibodies.

“The OMT rat contains human immunoglobulin genetic components in place of the rat counterpart, as a machinery to generate human antibodies upon immunization​,” Chou explained. “The product antibodies consist of a high degree of diversity in their capability of recognizing the antigen, offering a superior probability of identifying candidates for therapeutic development.”​

Preclinical arms of Big Pharma companies Merck, Pfizer and Janssen have already signed agreements to use OmniRat with OMT who are keen to offer the platform on a non-exclusive basis.

WuXi Pharmatech​ also signed up to OMT’s platform last September as part of the Chinese CRO’s global business initiative in expanding its discovery programmes. Now with GenScript’s alliance and intended road show it seems OmniRat is a popular technology to help cultivate the Asian preclinical market.