Intarcia and Numab Reach Key Milestone with Selection of Multispecific Development Candidate for Autoimmune Disease
Business Wire: September 14, 2017 – BOSTON, MA, U.S.A., and PFÄFFIKON, Switzerland – Intarcia Therapeutics, Inc., and Numab Therapeutics AG today announced the achievement of a key milestone in their ongoing development partnership—the selection of a multispecific antibody construct targeting autoimmune and inflammatory diseases. This delivery marks the first major milestone in the strategic relationship, established in the spring of 2015, and triggers a payment to Numab that will bring the total payments for this project to CHF 11.5 million to date.
This milestone, achieved by utilizing Numab’s innovative discovery and optimization platform to identify a highly potent and selective antibody fragment candidate, also signals an important next step towards realizing the potential of combining Numab’s antibody-based continued Companies in the News continued 37 38 therapeutics with Intarcia’s unique formulation and delivery technology—the Medici Drug Delivery System™, a proprietary subcutaneous delivery system that, once placed under the skin, utilizes an osmotic engine that allows drug within the mini-pump to be released in a steady, consistent fashion.
David Urech, Ph.D., CSO and co-CEO of Numab, stated, “Intarcia’s advanced delivery and formulation technologies set a very high bar for drug developers. We are proud to have successfully generated a robust trispecific lead candidate for autoimmune disease that has met all predefined biophysical and pharmacological properties in vitro and in nonhuman primates, and that is ready for the subsequent stage of Intarcia’s formulation development. We are also excited to announce the start of a CHF 30 million financing to accelerate the development of our own proprietary pipeline in cancer and autoimmune disease and move our main program to the clinical research stage.”
“Intarcia is excited to take this next step in our autoimmune and inflammatory disease programs with Numab,” said Kurt Graves, chairman, president, and CEO, Intarcia. “We’re committed to spearheading disruptive innovation by leveraging our proprietary Medici Drug Delivery System. With this new milestone in our partnership, we now have several combination products in our pipeline that we believe can be uniquely optimized for delivery in our Medici system.”
Founded in 2011, Numab develops a proprietary pipeline of multispecific biotherapeutics in immuno-oncology and immunology, and has discovery and development partnerships with Intarcia Inc., Ono Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd., Kaken Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd., and Tillotts Pharma AG. Numab’s plug-and-play multispecifics platform allows for a highly rational and reproducible process that rapidly yields promising clinical candidates with new mechanisms of action, superior efficacy, and a favorable safety profile. For further information, visit www.numab.com.
Intarcia Therapeutics, Inc. is a biopharmaceutical company developing therapies to enhance treatment and prevention outcomes by optimizing and improving the efficacy, continuous administration, and tolerability of drug therapies. Delivering medicines just once or twice yearly to prevent and/or chronically treat diseases holds potential to improve outcomes by improving effectiveness over time and by addressing real-world unmet needs around poor patient adherence and persistence rates that are high in the majority of chronic diseases. Intarcia is investigating multiple therapies, including combination therapies, for chronic diseases leveraging the convergence of novel medicines and the proprietary Medici Drug Delivery System™. Intarcia is developing a strong pipeline in important therapeutic areas, including diabetes (ITCA 650), obesity, autoimmune diseases, HIV, and other serious disorders.
