The company has also reported that the USPTO has issued US Patent No 7666415, covering bispecific antibody constructs incorporating the company’s proprietary histamine-succinyl-glycine (HSG)-binding 679 antibody.
Cynthia Sullivan, president and CEO of Immunomedics, said: “This patent further strengthens Immunomedics’ extensive patent portfolio in pretargeting technology, which allows the targeted delivery of therapeutic or diagnostic agents using disease-specific antibodies. The HSG-pretargeting conjugates have been used with our novel F-18 labeling methods to provide positron emission tomography (PET) imaging of cancers superior to fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG)-based constructs that are the current industry standard.
“This extends our existing family of DNL patents to allow production of PEGylated forms of virtually any therapeutic agent. Products currently under development include PEGylated interferon alpha, granulocyte colony-stimulating factor and erythropoietin with superior pharmacokinetic properties.”