Cel­gene antes up $55M, grabs op­tion to buy the au­toim­mune up­start Anokion

Cel­gene’s glo­be­trot­ting busi­ness de­vel­op­ment team has fo­cused on au­toim­mune dis­eases for its lat­est col­lab­o­ra­tion/op­tion-to-buy biotech deal.

The fo­cus this time: Anokion, a spin­out of the Ecole Poly­tech­nique Fédérale de Lau­sanne. The biotech has been work­ing on anti­gen-spe­cif­ic im­mune tol­er­ance tech to re­train the im­mune sys­tem to ig­nore the rogue sig­nals that spark an au­toim­mune re­sponse against healthy tis­sue while al­so re­struc­tur­ing pro­tein ther­a­pies to make them in­vis­i­ble to the im­mune sys­tem, pos­si­bly open­ing a path to us­ing some ther­a­pies that have been dis­card­ed in the past af­ter they trig­gered an im­mune re­sponse.

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