Hemogenyx Pharmaceuticals, a biotech developing novel therapies to transform bone marrow, or blood stem cell, transplantation for the treatment of blood diseases, has entered into a collaboration with major U.S. biotechnology company in a deal worth up to approximately $250,000 for Hemogenyx, the company said.

The collaboration follows on from the announcement made by the company recently, which confirmed the filing of a provisional patent application relating to the company’s development of a new type of humanized mice with a chimeric mouse-human blood system. These new humanized mice can be used for disease modelling and drug development.

This application of Hemogenyx’s humanized mice as a tool for drug development and testing forms the basis of the company’s collaboration with the U.S. biotech company. The collaboration, which is expected to last between four to six months, is a continuation of work previously undertaken in partnership with the company, and has the potential to generate further income as the collaboration develops.

“We are pleased to collaborate with a major U.S. biotechnology company, a leader in the field of blood cancer treatment,” said Vladislav Sandler, chief executive officer, and co-founder, Hemogenyx. “As we mentioned in our previous announcement, our new type of humanized mice let us extend our work into other disease models and specific drug development. The advancement of this collaboration and potential future collaborations serve both as a validation of our technology and a means of support for the further development of our CDX bi-specific antibody product candidate.”