Immune Design joins forces with academia for novel immunotherapy research

Privately-held US biotech firm Immune Design, the Cancer Research Institute (CRI) and the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research have a signed a collaboration agreement to advance cancer immunotherapy research. Specifically, the partnership will focus on clinical trials to test novel combinations of immunotherapies, including two investigational drugs from Immune Design’s pipeline. Financial terms of the accord were not disclosed.

“The collaboration with Immune Design marks the third in a series of CRI and Ludwig partnerships with industry designed to facilitate the investigation of next generation combination immunotherapies,” said Adam Kolom, managing director of CRI’s non-profit venture fund, which makes investments to support the costs of innovative immunotherapy clinical trials, adding: “Each of our partnerships is designed to facilitate access to one or more high-promise immune reagents so that exciting new combination treatments can be brought to patients and studied by researchers.”