Biocytogen Enters into Antibody Evaluation, Option and License Agreement with Myricx for ADC Development
Biocytogen Pharmaceuticals (Beijing) Co., Ltd. announces an antibody evaluation, option and license agreement with Myricx Bio (‘Myricx’), a UK biotech company focusing on the discovery and development of a completely novel class of selective cytotoxic payloads for antibody drug conjugates (ADCs).
Under the terms of the agreement, Myricx will provide its proprietary linker and payload and Biocytogen will conjugate them with its RenMice®-derived fully human antibodies to make ADCs. Biocytogen will carry out feasibility tests for these ADCs as CRO services, and upon option exercise, Myricx will be responsible for further development and commercialization. Biocytogen will receive an upfront payment and, subject to exercise Biocytogen will be eligible to receive ongoing development and commercialisation milestone payments, as well as single-digit royalties on net sales.
In this project, the antibodies developed by Biocytogen were not only screened by its high specificity, cross-species reactivity, high affinity and good developabilities, but also by its high internalization activity specifically for ADC uses.
NMT is an enzyme that adds a specific lipid modification to a number of protein targets key to cancer cell survival. Myricx is developing a pipeline of ADCs to address serious unmet needs in oncology based on its NMT inhibitor (NMTi) payload chemistry platform and has demonstrated excellent preclinical efficacy and safety across multiple solid tumour associated antigens and cancer cell types.
“Thanks to Myricx recognition of our antibody assets, preclinical discovery expertise and CMC capabilities,” said by Dr. Yuelei Shen, President and CEO of Biocytogen. “Myricx is a leading expert in NMTi payloads and we believe that the combination of both companies’ strengths will result in ADC drugs with first-in-class and best-in-class potential.”
Myricx CEO Dr Robin Carr said: “We are delighted to have reached this agreement with Biocytogen with ground-breaking technology to develop novel antibodies for use in drug development. We believe that the combination of its antibody with our novel NMTi-based selective cytotoxic payloads will enable us to develop best-in-class ADCs to meet significant clinical needs in oncology. NMT inhibitors represent a novel class of ADC payloads that can be exploited as targeted therapies in cancer. Based on our positive proof of concept data we believe that ADC-NMTi offers huge potential for selective cancer cell killing via its unique mechanism of action.”