On February 25, 2019 WuXi Biologics ("WuXi Bio") (2269.HK), a leading global open-access biologics technology platform company offering end-to-end solutions for biologics discovery, development and manufacturing, and ABL Bio Corporation ("ABL Bio") (298380.KS), a South Korean biotechnology company developing antibody therapeutics for immuno-oncology and neurodegenerative diseases, reported the expansion of their strategic partnership for novel bispecific antibodies and immune-oncology program (Press release, WuXi Biologics, FEB 25, 2019, View Source [SID1234533641]).
Schedule your 30 min Free 1stOncology Demo!
Discover why more than 1,500 members use 1stOncology™ to excel in:
Early/Late Stage Pipeline Development - Target Scouting - Clinical Biomarkers - Indication Selection & Expansion - BD&L Contacts - Conference Reports - Combinatorial Drug Settings - Companion Diagnostics - Drug Repositioning - First-in-class Analysis - Competitive Analysis - Deals & Licensing
Schedule Your 30 min Free Demo!
Under the terms of the agreements, ABL Bio has rights to use WuXi Biologics’ proprietary discovery platforms, including WuXiBody and CD3 platform, to research, develop and commercialize multiple bispecific antibodies, as well as rights to develop new bispecific antibodies targeting novel immune check point receptor. WuXi Biologics will receive an upfront payment as well as development, regulatory and commercial milestone payments of about $220 million, and will be entitled to royalties based on global sales of these programs.
In November 2018, ABL Bio and WuXi Biologics announced an exclusive development and clinical manufacturing partnership for multiple bispecific antibodies. This announcement today further strengthens the breadth and depth of the companies’ collaboration.
"We are quite excited about this collaboration with WuXi Biologics," said Dr. Sang Hoon Lee, CEO of ABL Bio. "I believe that the partnership with WuXi Biologics will bring a synergy for developing our bispecific antibody pipelines. It will help us to develop novel immune-oncology therapies on different bispecific platforms and lead us to step up to be a global top-tier biotechnology company for immuno-oncology and neurodegenerative disease treatment."
"We are glad to expand the partnership with ABL Bio, which manifests that WuXi Biologics has been well recognized as a global leader in the development and manufacturing of next-generation biologics such as bispecific antibodies. This is the 7th partnership we signed since we globally launched this exciting platform last August," said Dr. Chris Chen, CEO of WuXi Biologics. "Quick adoption of our WuXiBody bispecific platform further validates that this proprietary platform addresses most technical limitations of current bispecific platforms and can potentially tremendously reduce the cost of making these biologics. WuXi Biologics will continue to invest in developing globally leading next-generation technologies to accelerate and transform biologics discovery, development and manufacturing. With globally recognized technical capabilities and unparalleled capacities, we are transforming how biologics are developed in the global setting."
About WuXiBody
WuXiBody, a proprietary bispecific antibody platform of WuXi Biologics, is potentially the Best-in-Class bispecific platform in the field. It can effectively break through the CMC barriers of bispecific antibodies development, expedite the process by 6-18 months and significantly reduce manufacturing cost, a severe limitation of other current bispecific platforms. WuXiBody bispecifics have achieved 16g/L in cell culture titer. WuXiBody Platform enables almost any mAb sequence pairs to be assembled into bispecific constructs. They are characterized as low immunogenicity, long in vivo half-life like mAbs and excellent stability. WuXiBody Platform also owns its unique structural flexibility, which makes it convenient to build various formats with different valency (2, 3 or 4 binding sites) to meet the requirements of different bispecific targets.