Date: 2018-09-19
Type of information: Services contract
Compound:
- fully-humanized therapeutic antibodies devoid of CD4+ T cell epitopes
Company: Abzena (UK) Tmunity Therapeutics (USA - PA)
Therapeutic area: Cancer - Oncology - Technology - Services
Type agreement: services contract
Action mechanism: monoclonal antibody - CAR-T cell therapy
Disease:
Details:
- • On September 19, 2018, Abzena has signed an antibody humanisation agreement with Tmunity Therapeutics, a clinical stage T cell therapy company and a leader in the development of new Chimeric Antigen Receptor T Cell (CAR-T) therapies for the treatment of solid and hematological cancers. Under the agreement Abzena will humanize monoclonal antibodies using its Composite Human Antibody™ technology. This technology combines humanization and deimmunisation technologies to generate fully-humanized therapeutic antibodies devoid of CD4+ T cell epitopes.
- Tmunity will use the humanised antibodies to develop CAR-T engineered products. CAR-T therapy is an innovative therapeutic form of personalised medicine in which a patient’s own T-cells are genetically modified to express an antigen recognizing CAR on the surface of the T cell. When the CAR-T encounters a cancer cell expressing the cognate antigen, the CAR-T is activated releasing cytokines that kill the cancer cell. CAR-T therapies have been successfully developed for the treatment of hematological cancers, a success that Tmunity is seeking to duplicate in solid tumors and other hematological malignancies.
- The research and license agreement between Abzena and Tmunity also includes developability assessment to assess for any potential sequence liabilities that would affect quality of the product and EpiScreen™, Abzena’s ex-vivo immunogenicity assessment platform.
Financial terms:
- Under the terms of the licence agreement Abzena will also be due milestone payments should products containing any of the humanized antibody sequences reach IND acceptance.
Latest news:
Is general: Yes
