Date: 2013-05-09
Type of information: Licensing agreement
Compound: Novotarg
Company: Baliopharm (Switzerland) ApoGbR (Germany)
Therapeutic area: Cancer - Oncology - Inflammatory diseases
Type agreement: licensing
Action mechanism: Novotarg is a bispecific antibody targeting CD 20 and CD 95. CD 20 is an established target antigen for antibody based immunotherapy in cancer (like lymphoma) and B-cell mediated autoimmune disease. CD 95, also called “death receptor” mediates apoptosis. However, the use of monospecific CD 95 antibodies is associated with significant off-target toxicity. Therefore, CD 95 induced apoptosis should be induced only in cells, expressing CD20. This can be achieved by using bi-specific antibodies recognizing CD 20 and inducing CD 95 apoptosis only after initial interaction with the target antigen. In in vitro studies, CD20xCD95 bispecific antibodies have been shown to selectively trigger the CD95 death receptor and kill CD 20 positive SKW lymphoma cells. In vivo, in a nude mouse tumor model the growth of human SKW lymphoma cells was markedly suppressed by the bi-specific antibody. In contrast, cell culture experiments have shown that the bispecific antibody exhibits no toxicity towards cultured CD 95 sensitive cell lines, including normal human hepatocytes.
Disease: specific lymphomas, B-cell mediated inflammatory diseases
Details: Baliopharma AG, which was founded as a spin-off of Celonic AG, and ApoGbR have announced the signing of a world-wide, exclusive licensing agreement for a prototypic bi-specific therapeutic antibody which has been developed by Prof. Gundram Jung at the Institute of immunology of the University Tübingen. According to this agreement, Baliopharm obtains the world wide, exclusive rights on the bi-specific antibody called “Novotarg”, which is developed for the treatment of specific lymphomas but also for B-cell mediated inflammatory diseases. Novotarg binds highly selective to CD20 positive normal, activated or malignant B-cells which then will be destroyed by agonistic binding to a death receptor leading to selective elimination of these cells. Due to this bi-specific design both better safety and increased efficacy is reached, as shown in preclinical experiments. Baliopharma intends to enter the clinical development phase within the next 2 years.
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