Date: 2015-04-16
Type of information: Collaboration agreement
Compound: new Antibody Drug Conjugates (ADC)
Company: Innate Pharma (France) Sanofi-Aventis Recherche & Développement (France)
Therapeutic area: Cancer - Oncology
Type agreement: collaboration
Action mechanism: Innate Pharma’s coupling technology uses bacterial transglutaminase (BTG) enzyme. It aims to address the heterogeneity associated with traditional ADC coupling technologies which limits the therapeutic index of antibody conjugates. With Innate Pharma’s technology, a single point mutation in the antibody’s heavy chain generates either two or four specific enzyme recognition sites, and linkers have been optimized to couple quantitatively at these positions. The process results in homogeneous ADCs with a drug-to-antibody ratio of exactly 2:1 or 4:1 in a robust and time-efficient manner. The coupling is site-specific with minimal antibody scaffold modification, therefore only adding two steps in an already well-established manufacturing procedure widely accepted by regulatory agencies.
Innate Pharma’s new BTG-based process requires a minimal amount of cytotoxic drug compound, which can be important with regard to large-scale production of ADCs. This chemoenzymatic approach not only allows conversion of virtually any IgG1 into a functional ADC, but also enables rapid evaluation of various antibody candidates, linker systems or cytotoxic compounds.
Innate Pharma’s BTG-ADCs are stable in vivo and have low clearance. Quantitative timedependent in vivo biodistribution studies show high and specific tumor uptake, resulting in a favorable therapeutic index.
Disease:
Details: * On April 16, 2015, Innate Pharma, the innate immunity company developing first-in-class therapeutic antibodies for the treatment of cancer and inflammatory diseases, announced that it has entered into a collaboration agreement with Sanofi to apply Innate Pharma’s site-specific conjugation technology to the development of new Antibody Drug Conjugates (ADC). Sanofi-Aventis Recherche & Développement, the French R&D affiliate of Sanofi, will evaluate site-specific payload conjugation to enhance ADC pharmacokinetics, efficacy and safety and has the option to enter into a licencing agreement with Innate Pharma on this technology.
Other terms of the agreement are undisclosed.
Financial terms: Financial details were not disclosed.
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