On April 14, 2023 Molecular Partners AG (SIX: MOLN; NASDAQ: MOLN), a clinical-stage biotech company developing a new class of custom-built protein drugs known as DARPin therapeutics, reported that further preclinical data supporting the company’s Radio DARPin Therapy Platform will be shared at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) (Free AACR Whitepaper) Annual Meeting held April 14-19 in Orlando, Florida (Press release, Molecular Partners, APR 14, 2023, View Source [SID1234630053]).
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!
Poster: "DARPins as powerful targeting agents for radioligand therapeutics"
Number: 5037
Timing: April 18, 2023, 1:30pm – 5:00pm
Presenter: Daniel Steiner, Ph.D., Senior Vice President of Research
Molecular Partners’ proprietary Radio DARPin Therapy (RDT) platform represents a unique and innovative delivery system designed to deliver radioactive payloads to solid tumors without accumulating in other tissues. Historically, small protein-based delivery vectors have accumulated in the kidney, presenting a tolerability risk.
Data within the presentation demonstrate that both the affinity and small size of DARPins can have an impact on tumor penetration. In addition to this, the data highlights that surface engineering of the DARPin backbone is a promising strategy to strongly reduce the kidney accumulation of DARPins, without affecting tumor uptake. The data also show that the addition of other orthogonal strategies results in a further reduction of kidney accumulation.
"We continue to deepen the data set supporting the distinctive target product profile of RDTs, addressing historic challenges for protein-based radionuclide vectors through the particular attributes of DARPins as an engineered protein drug class," said Daniel Steiner, Ph.D., Senior Vice President of Research at Molecular Partners. "By improving on both the potential efficacy and safety of radiotherapy, we see a true potential for the RDT platform to expand the treatable universe, beyond the traditional ligand targets and into a broad range of tumor targets."
Molecular Partners is developing candidates both in-house as well as in collaboration with Novartis, a global leader in radioligand therapies. Molecular Partners’ first disclosed target for its in-house RDT programs is Delta-like ligand 3 (DLL3), a protein which has low expression in healthy tissues but significantly increased expression in certain tumor types.
Previously reported data supporting the RDT platform presented at TAT-12 can be found here, while the latest results will be shared via a poster at AACR (Free AACR Whitepaper) 2023 on April 18. The poster will be made available on the Molecular Partners website.