Antibody discovery company Adimab has added Celgene and Innovent to the growing list of partners for which it will generate therapeutic proteins.

The collaboration with Celgene is structured similarly to many of its large pharmaceutical and partnering deals. Adimab will generate therapeutic antibodies against multiple targets with Celgene having the option to develop and commercialize them. Adimab will get an upfront payment and if Celgene exercises its option for a particular target, Adimab will receive license fees, clinical milestones and royalties on sales.

The deal with China-based Innovent is a partnership wherein Adimab will use its yeast-based antibody discovery platform to identify a fully human therapeutic antibody against a target selected by Innovent. Innovent will coordinate all product development, with both companies retaining rights to develop and commercialize the therapeutic program in their respective territories—Innovent in China and Adimab in the United States, Europe, and Japan. Adimab will be paid for its discovery work and will reimburse Innovent for specific development costs. Each company will pay royalties to the other for sales in their respective territories.

Innovent was co-founded by Michael Yu, a U.S.-educated scientist who went back to China and started a company focused on making biobetters. Backed by Fidelity Investment and Lilly Ventures, Innovent has built a state-of-the-art commercial manufacturing plant in Suzhou, China with the backing of the Chinese government. While the company’s first projects are focused on biosimilars, the company came to Adimab with the proposal to work together for a target they were interested in.

Adimab has quietly and patiently built a strong and growing business from companies coming to it and asking it to discover antibodies for them, says Tillman Gerngross, Adimab co-founder and CEO. The biotech gets upfront fees, and clinical milestones and royalties if the antibodies are developed into therapeutic products.

“That business is a cash flow neutral business that builds a lot of long-term value,” says Gerngross. “But if any one of the drugs—and we are working on more than 30 programs—if any one of those becomes a drug in 5, 10, 20 years—it’s all huge upside for us.”

Adimab employs 70 people, most of whom are based in New Hampshire. From the company’s inception in 2007, Adimab’s goal was to make the antibody discovery process easier for drug developers. The company has developed a yeast-based platform to discover and optimize antibodies faster and cheaper than other technologies, according to Gerngross.

It has worked with more than a dozen pharmaceutical and biotech companies, many of them starting with one target and then broadening the collaboration. Several antibodies discovered by Adimab have already entered the clinic.

But while the antibody discovery model is sustainable, Gerngross was looking for a partner that would be interested in a deeper collaboration. That came in July when Adimab signed technology transfer deals with Biogen Idec and GlaxoSmithKline.

“The real kicker, and I think what sort of transformed the company, is the fact that we did these first two transfers to both GSK and Biogen,” says Gerngross. “Those are big upfront payments and they have turned the company into one of the few highly profitable venture-backed companies, of which there are very few.”

Gerngross declined to disclose financial terms of any of Adimab’s deals saying that biobucks deals are meaningless. “We are highly cash flow positive now,” he says. “This year we are going to make multiples of the cash flow we need to sustain the company.”

There are more deals in the works. Gerngross aims for Adimab dominate the antibody discovery space, and, with companies coming to it to access its technology, that may just happen.