Oxford BioTherapeutics (OBT), a clinical-stage oncology company based in Oxford, UK, announced a multi-year target discovery and development collaboration with Bristol Myers Squibb (NYSE: BMY) focused on the discovery and development of next-generation T-cell engager therapies for solid tumours.
The collaboration will deploy OBT’s proprietary OGAP-Verify target discovery and validation platform to identify novel, tumour-selective surface antigens, against which OBT will then design and deliver T-cell engager development candidates. BMS will assume responsibility for all subsequent research, development, and global commercialization activities following candidate handoff. Specific targets and financial terms were not disclosed, though OBT will receive an upfront payment inclusive of research funding, along with potential downstream milestone payments and royalties on net sales.
Under the work-share arrangement, OBT retains responsibility through target identification and preclinical candidate generation, reflecting what the company describes as its evolution into a fully integrated discovery and preclinical development platform. The collaboration marks OBT’s third partnership with a major pharmaceutical company in the past 12 months, following agreements with GSK and Roche in 2025. OBT’s existing partner roster also includes Boehringer Ingelheim and Zymeworks. Three programmes originating from the OGAP-Verify platform are currently in clinical development in the US and Europe.
The scientific rationale centres on a recognized bottleneck in solid tumour immunotherapy: the difficulty of identifying cell-surface antigens that are sufficiently expressed on tumor cells while absent or restricted in normal tissues. T-cell engager formats — typically bispecific antibodies that simultaneously bind a tumor-associated antigen and recruit CD3-expressing T-cells — have demonstrated clinical utility in hematologic malignancies, but their application to solid tumors has been constrained by on-target, off-tumor toxicity risk arising from antigen expression in healthy tissue. OBT’s OGAP-Verify platform addresses this by applying cell-surface glycoproteomics to primary human tumor material, systematically comparing antigen expression profiles against a broad panel of normal human tissues to identify candidates with a selectivity profile suitable for antibody-based drug development. The “Verify” component of the platform name reflects this normal tissue cross-referencing function.