Enumeral Biomedical Holdings has entered into a research study agreement with University of Massachusetts Medical School, which includes the institution’s clinical partner, UMass Memorial HealthCare. UMass Medical will provide Enumeral with tissue samples and blood samples from subjects with melanoma who are being treated with Ipilimumab (Yervoy). Enumeral will fund the tissue collection activities, and Enumeral will have access to the samples for research-only use in in-vitro studies.

“Information our platform generates in such longitudinal studies could enable us to generate insights into which immunotherapeutic strategies may be successful in patients that are not well-treated by currently marketed drugs,” said Arthur H. Tinkelenberg, Ph.D., Enumeral’s president and chief executive officer.

“This collaboration will allow us to study the effects of checkpoint blockade on the immune system at single cell resolution, by analyzing blood and tumor-tissue directly from individual patients using Enumeral’s unique immunoprofiling platform. This is the basis of our translational strategy to support development of novel immunotherapeutics—what we call our Human Approach,” said Enumeral Vice President of Translational and Clinical Sciences M. Isabel Chiu, Ph.D.

Enumeral’s scientists will apply the company’s proprietary platform technology to analyze single immune cells within the patient samples. The study will be conducted under the direction of William Walsh, M.D., clinical associate professor of medicine at UMass Medical and Principal Investigator.