Abzena Announces a Research and Licence Agreement with Tmunity Therapeutics, a T Cell Engineering Company
19 September 2018 - 6:01PM
Business Wire
Abzena, plc (AIM: ABZA, Abzena’), the life sciences group
providing services and technologies to enable the development and
manufacture of biopharmaceutical products, has signed an antibody
humanisation agreement with Tmunity Therapeutics (Tmunity), 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.
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.
Campbell Bunce, SVP Scientific Operations of Abzena,
said:
“We are delighted to be working with such an innovative
organisation as Tmunity, to use our Composite Human Antibody™
platform to help design superior CARs for their CAR-T products. We
believe that reducing the risk of immunogenicity of the receptor
will contribute to a reduced risk profile for this exciting and
potent treatment for cancer.”
“Innovative use of our proprietary technology for an emerging
and revolutionary drug platform like CAR-T, and utilisation of our
protein engineering, immunology and bioanalytics expertise, is a
great example of our ability to provide world-class support to our
partners.”
-Ends-
About Abzena
Abzena (AIM: ABZA) provides proprietary technologies and
complementary services to enable the development and manufacture of
biopharmaceutical products.
The term ‘ABZENA Inside’ is used by Abzena to describe
products that have been created using its proprietary technologies
and are being developed by its partners, and include Composite
Human Antibodies™ and ThioBridge™ Antibody Drug Conjugates (ADCs).
Abzena has the potential to earn future licence fees, milestone
payments and/or royalties on ABZENA Inside products.
Abzena offers the following services and technologies across its
principal sites in Cambridge (UK), San Diego, California (USA) and
Bristol, Pennsylvania (USA):
- Biology research studies, including
immunogenicity assessment of candidate biopharmaceutical products
and bioassay development;
- Protein engineering to create humanized
antibodies and deimmunised therapeutic proteins;
- Cell line development for the
manufacture of recombinant proteins and antibodies;
- Contract process development and GMP
manufacture of biopharmaceuticals, including monoclonal antibodies
and recombinant proteins for preclinical and clinical studies;
- Contract synthetic chemistry and
bioconjugation research services, focused on antibody-drug
conjugates (ADCs);
- Proprietary site-specific conjugation
technologies and novel payloads for ADC development;
- GMP manufacturing of ADC linkers,
payloads & combined linker-payloads; and
- GMP analytical services for
biopharmaceutical manufacturing projects.
For more information, please see www.abzena.com.
About Tmunity Therapeutics
Tmunity is a private, clinical-stage biotherapeutics company
focused on saving and improving lives by delivering the full
potential of next-generation T cell immunotherapy to patients with
devastating diseases. Integrating a foundational collaboration with
the University of Pennsylvania (Penn) with the groundbreaking
scientific, clinical and manufacturing expertise and demonstrated
track record of its founders (Carl June, MD; Bruce Blazar, MD;
Bruce Levine, PhD; Yangbing Zhao, MD, PhD; Jim Riley, PhD; and Anne
Chew, PhD), Tmunity represents a new center of gravity in
translational T cell medicine. The company is developing a
diversified portfolio of novel treatments that exhibit
best-in-class control over T cell activation and direction in the
body, with an initial focus in cancer with two programs currently
in the clinic. With headquarters in Philadelphia, Tmunity utilizes
laboratories and production facilities at Penn and its own
dedicated cGMP manufacturing facility in Norristown, PA, to pursue
process improvement and production scale-up in support of clinical
development of its T cell therapies. For more information, visit
www.tmunity.com.
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version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180919005056/en/
Enquiries:Abzena plcJohn Burt, +44 1223
903498Chief Executive OfficerorInstinctif PartnersMelanie
Toyne Sewell / Rozi Morris / Alex Shaw, +44 20 7457
2020abzena@instinctif.com
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