SAN CARLOS, CA, USA I December 2, 2014 I Atreca, Inc., announced today that it has entered into a strategic collaboration with Janssen Biotech, Inc. (Janssen) in which the companies will apply Atreca’s Immune Repertoire Capture™ technology to autoimmune disease. The goal of the collaboration, facilitated by the Johnson & Johnson Innovation Center in California, is to detail the molecular mechanisms underlying diseases and define patient subgroups with distinct disease biology to inform better treatment.

“Atreca’s proprietary technology rapidly delivers the true diversity and comprehensive, detailed structure of an immune response—both antibodies and T cell receptors (TCRs) with key cell subtype information—generating unbiased, accurate, and quantitative output,” said Tito A. Serafini, Ph.D., chief executive officer and co-founder of Atreca, Inc. “We are delighted to be working with Janssen scientists to bring the deep understanding offered by our Immune Repertoire Capture™ technology to diseases with unmet needs and to the discovery of novel therapeutic agents.”

Under the terms of this multi-year agreement, Atreca will receive research funding and success-based milestone payments. Immune Repertoire Capture™ technology employs proprietary single-cell analysis to deliver full-length, natively paired antibody and T cell receptor repertoires along with the levels of co-expressed genes that reveal cell subtype and phenotype. These data reveal the activity of the immune system and enable identification of the molecular targets of an immune response. Applied to human disease, Immune Repertoire Capture™ is an engine for the discovery and development of novel therapeutics, vaccines, and diagnostics.

About Atreca, Inc.

Atreca is a privately held biotechnology company developing a novel class of antibody therapeutics from effective human anti-cancer immune responses. We use the structure of clinically successful anti-cancer immune responses to identify the antibodies, T cell receptors, and targets that are key to successful treatment outcomes. Atreca’s proprietary Immune Repertoire Capture™ technology profiles a patient’s immune response at the single-cell level at very high throughput without bias or error, enabling the identification and generation of functional human antibodies and TCRs without prior knowledge of antigen. Immune Repertoire Capture™ technology has wide application in oncology, autoimmune, and infectious disease, both as an engine for discovery and development of antibody-based therapeutics and for identifying the critical targets of effective immune responses.

SOURCE: Atreca