On October 4, 2017 Selexis SA and Pelican Therapeutics ("Pelican"), a subsidiary of Heat Biologics, Inc. ("Heat") (Nasdaq: HTBX), reported that they have entered into a service agreement to advance the development of Pelican’s proprietary immunotherapy clinical candidates (Press release, Selexis, OCT 4, 2017, View Source [SID1234520784]). Under the agreement, Pelican intends to leverage Selexis’ proprietary SUREtechnology PlatformTM to rapidly develop high-performance research cell banks (RCBs) expressing two of Pelican’s clinical candidates, including PTX-35, a humanized monoclonal antibody that is a functional agonist of human TNFRSF25, and PTX-15, a human TL1A-Ig fusion protein. Both candidates have the potential to improve clinical response when used in combination with Heat’s ImPACT therapeutic platform and other immunotherapy drugs.
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"With immunotherapies dominating the treatment landscape, we continually find that our technology can help our partners, such as Pelican, advance candidates for unmet medical needs including certain cancers," said Yemi Onakunle, PhD, MBA, Selexis vice president, licensing and business development. "By combining our ability to rapidly produce high-expressing and stable research cell banks with KBI Biopharma’s strong development, production and analytical capabilities, we are able to reliably and predictably support Pelican’s clinical development and provide the fastest timelines to the eventual commercialization of both clinical candidates."
In June 2017, JSR Corporation acquired Selexis SA to bring best-in-class cell line development technology to JSR Life Sciences, its life sciences division. JSR Life Sciences is now offering industry partners best-in-class contract development manufacturing organization (CDMO) services by complementing its commercial subsidiary KBI Biopharma with Selexis technologies.
Rahul Jasuja, CEO of Pelican, added: "We chose Selexis for their expertise in cell line expression technologies for recombinant protein therapeutics for the CMC development of our two molecules, PTX-35 and PTX-15. We look forward to advancing our TNFRSF25 agonist program with both KBI Biopharma and Selexis as we prepare for our first-in-human clinical trial."
PTX-35, Pelican’s lead product candidate, is a novel monoclonal antibody against TNFRSF25, an emerging costimulatory receptor on T cells. The agent provides highly selective and potent stimulation of ‘memory’ CD8+ cytotoxic T cells, a class of T cell that is responsible for eliminating tumor cells in patients. PTX-35 has the potential to enhance durability of antigen-specific immune responses in combination with other immunotherapies.
Selexis’ proprietary SUREtechnology Platform facilitates the rapid, stable, and cost-effective production of virtually any recombinant protein and provides seamless integration of the biologics development continuum, spanning discovery to commercialization.