Boehringer Ingelheim and Ablynx extend nanobody alliance

Boehringer Ingelheim has extended its global strategic nanobody alliance with life science company Ablynx by two years.

The global strategic alliance to discover, develop and commercialise up to ten different nanobody therapeutics is now set to run until September 2014 and will see Ablynx provided with an additional 6.6 million euros (5.5 million pounds) in funding.

Following this new agreement, all ten of the nanobody projects will be able to be advanced to a stage where Boehringer Ingelheim can potentially progress each of them into development.

Currently, two Nanobody programmes are undergoing preclinical trials and eight are at various stages of development across multiple disease areas, while one additional treatment for Alzheimer's disease has also been created under a separate scheme.

Dr Edwin Moses, chief executive officer and chairman of Ablynx, said: "We are very pleased to have eleven nanobody programmes potentially able to make an important contribution to Boehringer Ingelheim's research and development pipeline."

Last month, it was announced that the company will also be allying with Xencor to create new biosuperior monoclonal antibodies, based on the protein design automation platform technology Xtend.