Hummingbird Bioscience utilises its technologies to drug clinically-validated targets that have earlier been elusive.
Its advanced programme, HMBD-001, is a HER3 antibody that targets an epitope on the important dimerization interface.
HER3 is a member of the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) family that is considered important in progression of tumour and metastasis.
As against the previous generations of HER3 antibodies, HMBD-001 obstructs ligand-dependent and ligand-independent signaling, eliciting potent anti-tumour impacts.
By tapping Caris’ wide clinico-genomic database to support clinical trial design, Hummingbird Bioscience will have a better way of identifying patients with molecular biomarkers that are potentially linked with response to HMBD-001.
Caris Life Sciences chief business officer Brian Lamon said: “Caris’ partnership with Hummingbird Bioscience aligns with our goal of leveraging molecular and clinical data to power and accelerate the development of precision therapies.
“Our partnership will help evaluate biomarkers to better understand the clinical utility for this novel therapy, drive patient recruitment and clinical trial access, and may ultimately provide new treatment alternatives and options to patients who are not responding to current therapies.”
Hummingbird Bioscience chief scientific officer Jerome Boyd-Kirkup said: “With our proprietary technologies, Hummingbird Bioscience discovers and develops unique biotherapeutics against challenging oncology and autoimmune targets. To ensure that these novel therapies succeed, we must conduct intelligent and focused clinical trials on patients who are likely to benefit the most.
“As a data-driven company, we understand the value of using large cohorts of molecular and clinical information to gain a deeper understanding of the patients who may respond to this exciting new therapy and track their response. We are excited by the potential of this partnership, and we look forward to better, more efficient clinical development with access to Caris’ vast amount of real-world data and state-of-the-art comprehensive profiling technologies.”
With the launch of its molecular profiling service in 2009, Caris has gathered molecular data on more than 400,000 patients and clinical outcomes on more than 275,000 patients.
Caris’ sequencing laboratories allow it to carry out whole exome DNA sequencing and whole transcriptome RNA sequencing on every patient.
Its data-driven, molecular insights are claimed to be altering the precision medicine landscape with actionable insights from retrospective, epidemiologic and real-time molecular data to improve research and commercial activities.