LOS ANGELES--(BUSINESS WIRE)--ImmunoCellular Therapeutics, Ltd. (OTCBB: IMUC), a clinical-stage biotechnology company that is developing immune based therapies for the treatment of brain and other cancers, announced today that it has completed humanization of ICT-37 and ICT-109. This humanization was done in collaboration with Antitope, a privately held, UK based biotechnology company providing services in the areas of immunogenicity testing, antibody humanization and protein engineering for the purpose of reducing immunogenicity with therapeutic monoclonal antibodies. The collaboration has resulted in two novel antibodies targeting CEACAM5 alone and CEACAM5 and CEACAM6, two commonly expressed genes present in malignant cells specific to colon cancer, small cell lung cancer and pancreatic cancer. Humanization is designed to increase acceptance of antibodies by host immune systems, which was achieved through Antitope’s Composite Human AntibodyTM Technology which replaces murine sequences with human sequences in order to prevent the immune system from attacking it as a foreign threat, and is a crucial step in the development of therapeutic monoclonal antibodies.
