Cambridge, UK and Diepenbeek, Belgium – Abzena plc (AIM:ABZA), a life sciences company providing services and technologies that enable the development of biopharmaceutical products, announced today that its subsidiary Antitope Limited has entered into an agreement with Apitope, a private European biotech company focused on the discovery and development of disease-modifying treatments for autoimmune diseases. Under the agreement, Antitope will investigate and measure the immunological status of haemophilia A patients after treatment.
Apitope’s patented discovery platform enables selection of potential disease-modifying peptide therapies for the autoimmune disease of interest. It has a pipeline of compounds in development including ATX-F8-117, which has been designed to induce immune tolerance to blood coagulation factor VIII in haemophilia A patients.
Haemophilia A is caused by a deficiency in blood coagulation factor VIII and is treated with replacement factor VIII protein. About 30% of haemophilia A patients develop neutralising antibodies to factor VIII which inhibits its activity and thus renders treatment less effective. Such patients are at risk of serious and life-threatening bleeding.
Matthew Baker, CSO of Abzena, stated: “We are excited by the opportunity to be working with Apitope to design and run a bespoke study which will help them understand patient responses to treatment with ATX-F8-117.”
Keith Martin, CEO of Apitope, added: “ATX-F8-117 is currently in late preclinical development and we are delighted to work with Abzena on measuring the impact of this treatment for haemophilia A patients.”
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For further information:
Apitope International N.V.
Dr Keith Martin, CEO
Tel: +44 (0)117 370 7720
keith.martin@apitope.com
Hume Brophy
Mary Clark, Supriya Mathur, Hollie Vile
Tel: +44 (0)20 3440 5653
apitope@humebrophy.com
About Apitope
Apitope International NV, based in Belgium and the UK, is a world-class drug developer of immunotherapies for the treatment of autoimmune and allergic diseases, including multiple sclerosis, Factor VIII intolerance, uveitis and Graves’ disease. Apitope has a patented discovery platform which enables selection of potential disease-modifying peptide therapies for the autoimmune/allergic disease of interest; and has already generated a pipeline of 7 programmes in clinical and preclinical development, of which the lead programme in multiple sclerosis is partnered with Merck Serono. The discovery engine selects Apitopes® - Antigen Processing Independent epiTOPES. Apitopes® are soluble, synthetic peptides from the human sequence which can selectively suppress abnormal immune responses and reinstate the normal immune balance (Larche M, Wraith DC. Peptide-based therapeutic vaccines for allergic and autoimmune diseases. Nat Med 2005;11:S69-76). Stakeholders in the company include the Wellcome Trust, LRM, Vesalius Biocapital and the US MS charity, Fast Forward.
For more information on the company, please visit: www.apitope.com
About Abzena
Abzena provides proprietary technologies and complementary services to enable the development of better biopharmaceuticals. The Group comprises PolyTherics and Antitope which have established a broad suite of services and technologies that are designed to improve the chances of successful development of antibodies and proteins with enhanced therapeutic benefits.
Antitope provides immunogenicity assessment, protein engineering to create humanized antibodies and deimmunised therapeutic proteins, and cell line development for manufacture.
PolyTherics specializes in proprietary site-specific conjugation technologies for antibody drug conjugate development and solutions for optimization of the therapeutic properties of biopharmaceuticals.
The Group has built a global customer base over the past decade which includes the majority of the top 20 biopharmaceutical companies, many large and small biotech companies, and academic groups.
Abzena is quoted on the AIM segment of the London Stock Exchange under the symbol ABZA.
www.abzena.com
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