As part of the collaboration, the companies will jointly develop new antibody drugs which can significantly expand the immunotherapy’s potential in improving the lives of cancer and other debilitating disease patients.
Under the deal, Biocytogen will use T Cell Receptor (TCR)-mimic antibody development platform to screen complete human antibodies against the specific targets.
Meanwhile, CtM Bio will co-develop the T cell engagers targeting intracellular tumor-associated antigens using T cell engager platform.
Biocytogen Pharmaceuticals stated: “CtM Bio has extensive experience in the discovery of innovative drug candidates for the treatment of life-threatening diseases.
“The company has developed a proprietary T cell engager platform with differentiated properties which is expected to turn “cold tumours” into “hot tumours”, possibly overcoming the current limitation of immunotherapy.”
Biocytogen ‘s TCR-mimic antibody platform uses a strain of complete human RenMabTM mice expressing a human leukocyte antigen (HLA) gene.
It aims to identify TCR-mimic antibodies with higher specificity and affinity compared with the endogenous TCRs derived from patients.
The platform has been designed for facilitating the discovery of antibodies to intracellular tumor-associated antigens.
The antibody hits for multiple intracellular targets are currently undergoing in vitro and in vivo characterisation.
Furthermore, the complete human antibody sequences obtained from the TCR-mimic platform could help in developing T cell engagers, CAR-T therapies, and bispecific/multi-specific antibodies.
Recently, Biocytogen’s subsidiary Eucure Biopharma commenced patient dosing for a Phase I clinical trial of YH003 (anti-CD40 monoclonal antibody, mAb) in combination with YH001 (anti-CTLA-4 mAb) and pembrolizumab (anti-PD-1 mAb).