Navrogen, Inc. announced that it has entered into a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) with researchers at the U.S. National Cancer Institute (NCI), part of the National Institutes of Health. Under this CRADA, Navrogen will sponsor the clinical investigation of the experimental antibody-drug conjugate, NAV-001, under the supervision of Dr. Raffit Hassan, Chief of Thoracic and GI Malignancies Branch at the NCI.
NAV-001, which targets tumors expressing the cancer antigen mesothelin, was developed by Navrogen in collaboration with researchers at the NCI, including Dr. Ira Pastan, Distinguished Investigator and chief emeritus of the NCI Center for Cancer Research’s Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Dr. Mitchell Ho, Deputy Chief of the Laboratory of Molecular Biology, as well as Dr. Hassan.
“Because of this collaborative team effort, we have been able to engineer an antibody that targets a unique region of mesothelin, which avoids immunosuppressive factors and is conducive to more effective delivery of NAV-001’s payload” stated Luigi Grasso, Ph.D., Chief Scientific Officer of Navrogen. “NAV-001 has proven to be very effective with single, sub-mg/kg dosing against various patient-derived tumor types in mouse models, causing significant regression of the cancer lesions.”
Based on the robust efficacy of NAV-001, this CRADA represents a stepping-stone to advance the program to clinical testing in highly responsive cancers identified from preclinical studies, including triple-negative breast, metastatic colon, non-small cell lung, and mesothelioma cancers.