Australian and Taiwanese biopharmaceutical companies set to leverage ADC and mAb technologies.

Abzena announced the signing of separate agreements that will eventually bring ADC and mAb-based therapies to patients, one with OBI Pharma of Taiwan and the other with Telix Pharmaceuticals of Australia to license (respectively) the company’s ThioBridge^TM ADC linker and prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA) mAb.

Earlier this month, Abzena announced their agreement with OBI, a biopharmaceutical company located in Taipei, which is focused on developing and licensing novel therapeutic agents and next-gen treatments for cancer. According to Abzena, the license agreement covers the company’s novel, site-specific ThioBridge ADC linker technology that OBI intends to use in its development of a proprietary ADC OBI-999. OBI also signed a master services and clinical supply agreement which will leverage Abzena’s process development and manufacturing operations to produce OBI-999 (clinical and commercial supply) and future ADC products.

Amy Huang, OBI Pharma’s General Manager, expressed that OBI is looking forward to the potential ThioBridge brings in aiding OBI-999 target cancers cells that are over-expressing Globo H antigens, as well as with the company’s future products in the development pipeline. “The collaboration enhances our ADC development program and we hope to develop effective cancer treatments for patients with cancers that express Globo series antigens.”

Following this, Abzena announced its licensing agreement with Telix Pharmaceuticals, a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company located in Melbourne, with a pipeline of “theranostic” radiopharmaceuticals that can be used for both diagnostic imaging and therapeutics. Under the agreement’s terms, said Abzena, Telix is granted an exclusive, global, “royalty bearing sub-licensable license” to the company’s prostate-specific antigen, which deploys Abzena’s Composite Human Antibody^TM platform. According to the announcement, the antibodies are cancer specific and depending on the isotope, the “resulting radio-conjugate can either be used to image where cancerous cells are in the prostate or to kill the cancer with great precision, minimizing the radiation exposure to health tissue.”

CEO of Telix Pharmaceuticals, Christian Behrenbruch described the tremendous potential mAbs have in fighting cancer, characterizing radio-immunoconjugates with PSMA as one of the most adaptable, site-specific precision medicines available for prostate cancer. “This deal with Abzena significantly reinforces Telix’s development focus in prostate cancer. Our approach to delivering molecularly-targeted radiation not only represents the next frontier for radiation oncology therapy, but also has an important nexus with the rapidly developing field of cancer immunotherapy.”