PolyTherics and Alpha Cancer Technologies Collaborate to Produce Drug Conjugates to Target Tumours

03-Jun-2014 - United Kingdom

PolyTherics Limited, an Abzena company, announced a collaboration with Alpha cancer Technologies Inc. (“ACT”. PolyTherics will produce a range of AFP drug conjugates for ACT to test using its proprietary ThioBridge™ technology.

ACT has developed a drug delivery system based on AFP, a shuttle protein that binds to AFP receptors, which are present in large amounts on the majority of cancer cells but only rarely on healthy cells.  AFP has been studied extensively and has been shown to be safe in Phase I and II clinical studies involving over 400 patients.  ACT’s lead product (ACT-901), which is in preclinical development, will use AFP initially to deliver paclitaxel to ovarian tumours.

PolyTherics has developed ThioBridge™ for site-specific conjugation of cytotoxic payloads to disulfide bonds in proteins and antibodies to provide more stable and less heterogeneous drug conjugates. Under the collaboration PolyTherics will conjugate AFP to a derivative of a known cytotoxic drug using ThioBridge™ to produce a range of different drug conjugates for testing.

Other news from the department business & finance

Most read news

More news from our other portals

Fighting cancer: latest developments and advances