Avacta Group has agreed a co-development partnership with Bach BioSciences, a company commercializing the research of William Bachovchin, Professor of Developmental, Chemical and Molecular Biology at Tufts University School of Medicine, Boston. The collaboration will develop a new class of Affimer drug conjugate therapies with a novel mode of action that combines Avacta’s Affimer technology with drug conjugates developed at Tufts.
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A co-invention with Tufts, the company has devised a new class of drug conjugate. This selectively releases a potent drug in the tumor microenvironment (TME) without requiring cellular internalization of the conjugate as is otherwise the case with traditional antibody-drug conjugates. Some of the novel and differentiating features of Avacta’s Affimer-drug conjugate (“AfDC”) platform include:
- Utilizing Affimers that target immune checkpoints such as PD-L1, which serves the dual purpose of localizing the drug conjugate to the tumor, while also being immuno-oncologically active and functioning as immune checkpoint inhibitors;
- Incorporating a novel linker chemistry designed by Tufts to release, only in the tumor, the active forms of highly potent small molecule drugs that are activators of innate immunity. This thereby creates a highly localized inflammatory event that is synergistic with the Affimer checkpoint inhibitor.
Avacta and Tufts have jointly filed for broad patent protection for this inventive concept. The patent covers Affimers, and a wide range of other binders, against oncology, viral and inflammatory targets that are not internalized rapidly enough to be useful in traditional antibody-drug conjugates. It also covers a wide range of drugs to which the binders can be conjugated.
The drug development partnership that the company is now initiating with Professor Bachovchin will develop the first example of this new class of drug conjugate based on the combination of Affimer PDL1 inhibitors and an I-DASH small molecule inhibitor, for which considerable clinical data has already been generated by the laboratory at Tufts. Avacta has exclusive rights to commercialize these novel drug conjugates.
“We are very excited indeed by this highly novel Affimer drug conjugate concept, the first example of which builds on our own PD-L1 programme and the world-class research of Professor Bachovchin at Tufts University School of Medicine, one of the top US medical schools and research institutes,” Dr. Alastair Smith, Chief Executive Officer of Avacta Group, said. “Broad patent protection for this dual mode of action therapy would be extremely valuable because it could be applied to a wide range of cancers for which patient response to checkpoint inhibitors alone is not high.”