Date: 2015-10-14
Type of information: Licensing agreement
Compound: GlymaxX® Antibody Glyco-Engineering technology
Company: ProBioGen (Germany) Zymeworks (Canada)
Therapeutic area: Technology - Services
Type agreement:
Action mechanism: ADCC (Antibody-Dependent Cell-Mediated Cytotoxicity) activity is an important antibody function leading to selectively killing target cells, i.e. cancer cells or pathogen-infected cells. ADCC enhancement has the potential to increase the therapeutic effect and/or to greatly reduce antibody dosage requirements, resulting in fewer side-effects and treatment costs. The absence of fucose enhances ADCC. The GlymaxX® technology, developed by ProBioGen, prevents the synthesis of the sugar “fucose” and hence, in antibody-producing cells, its addition to the N-linked carbohydrate part of the antibody. The absence of fucose is known to greatly enhance ADCC. The GlymaxX® technology is based on the stable introduction of a gene for an enzyme which eliminates the producer cells’ fucose biosynthesis pathway. GlymaxX® is universally applicable to different Chinese hamster ovary, or CHO, hosts and all other eukaryotic cell species. It can be applied in a few weeks to any existing antibody producer cell line, can be used in the context of ProBioGen’s pre-engineered GlymaxX® host cells, or can be introduced into entire animal cell expression platforms by modifying the host cell line.
Disease:
Details: * On October 14, 2015, ProBioGen AG, a specialist for contract development and manufacturing of complex glycoproteins, and Zymeworks, an antibody therapeutics development company, announced signing an agreement under which ProBioGen will complete cell line development of a Zymeworks bi-specific antibody product candidate, applying its GlymaxX® Technology to enhance antibody-dependent cell-mediated cytotoxicity (ADCC).
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