Affimed gets 550K euro grant from MITI initiative

Affimed Therapeutics AG, a German biopharmaceutical company focused on the development of antibody therapeutics, has entered a collaboration  project with Germany's Bayer Schering Pharma AG, the German Cancer  Research Center and other partners within the Molecular Imaging  Technology Initiative launched by the German Federal Ministry of  Education and Research (BMBF).

Affimed will receive a funded grant totaling more than 550,000 euros  ($716,237) to carry out its part of the project. BMBF supports the  Molecular Imaging Technology Initiative for the development of new  diagnostic methods and imaging technologies for clinical use and  pharmaceutical applications.

Within this collaboration, Affimed will identify and isolate new  molecules binding to membrane-associated targets on tumor tissues, using  its highly-diverse human antibody libraries. The optimized binding  molecules in their final format will be further characterized in vitro  by the other collaboration partners. The main goal is to find new  diagnostic tracer molecules for use in imaging technologies, but  identified molecules could also be used for in vitro diagnostic purposes  or the development of new drugs.