Oncimmune Holdings PLC (AIM:ONC) said it has signed a commercial collaboration deal with a health company owned by Google’s parent, Alphabet.
The AIM-listed immunodiagnostics firm is teaming up with Verily Life Sciences to assess long Covid data.
Specifically, the teams will use autoantibody profiling of patients to see if the markers present early in the infection are associated with persistent symptoms and after-effects and remain present after the initial illness.
Oncimmune said it will utilise its recently validated infectious disease panel developed under the IMmunity Profiling of pAtients with COVID-19 for Therapy and Triage, or IMPACTT programme.
Should this discovery phase prove successful, Verily and Oncimmune have rights to commercialise their findings, which may include the development of a companion diagnostic.
"The real impact on society of long COVID is only beginning to be understood,” said Oncimmune chief executive, Dr Adam Hill.
“Oncimmune is a leader in infectious disease serological antibody profiling, and therefore this partnership with Verily, utilising Oncimmune's validated infectious disease panel, will seek to identify autoantibodies which are indicators for Long COVID. It is yet another exemplar of Oncimmune's leading position in autoimmune profiling.
"As is typical with Oncimmune's contracts, there is potential for the initial discovery work in autoantibodies to progress onto the identification of intellectual property rights, and to the development of viable commercial companion diagnostic devices."