CAMBRIDGE, MASS. – STC Biologics, Inc., a privately-held biotechnology company specializing in biosimilar development, announced today that it entered into a $2.5-million Phase II SBIR contract with the National Cancer Institute (NCI) to develop a biosimilar version of a monoclonal antibody for the treatment of cancer. The NCI funding will create at least seven new jobs at the company in Massachusetts.
In connection with this contract, STC Biologics will also receive an infusion of $2 million from Ligacept LLC, a biotechnology company headquartered in Oak Brook, Ill. Ligacept LLC is currently working on development of a multi-targeting ligand trap in partnership with STC Biologics.
“The Phase II SBIR contract, combined with the cash infusion from Ligacept, will allow us to aggressively pursue the development of our biosimilar, STC101, in order to complete manufacturing scale-up and initiate clinical activities by end of third quarter of 2013,” said Dr. Magdalena Leszczyniecka, STC Biologics’ President & CEO. “We are also currently in discussions with a number of pharmaceutical companies to partner STC101 to complete its clinical development. So far, we have gathered a very positive response as these companies await Phase I/II clinical data.”
The Massachusetts Life Sciences Center (MLSC), the agency charged with implementing Governor Patrick’s 10- year, $1 billion Life Sciences Initiative, wrote a letter of support to supplement STC Biologics’ application for the SBIR Phase II funding. Dr. Leszczyniecka has also hired eight interns to work at STC Biologics through the MLSC’s “Internship Challenge” program.
“Congratulations to the team at STC Biologics on their SBIR Phase II NCI funding contract,” said Susan Windham- Bannister, Ph.D., President & CEO of the MLSC. “The Center was proud to support STC Biologics during the application process. We are also excited that STC Biologics has utilized the Center’s ‘Internship Challenge’ program to enable students looking to establish a career in the life sciences to work at a company that is performing groundbreaking research in cancer treatment.”
Additionally, STC Biologics was founded by women. Only one-fifth of New England-based biotechnology companies have been founded by women, according to an article in the American Behavioral Scientist. The majority of STC Biologics is currently women-owned.
About STC Biologics STC Biologics, Inc. is a biotechnology company located in Cambridge, Mass., which focuses on the development of biosimilar versions of monoclonal antibody drugs. STC’s strategy for biosimilars is to develop high fidelity copies of branded drugs through the use of its proprietary gSAR™ (glycoactivity structure relationship) platform and process development, which minimizes biologically relevant differences between different drug samples (i.e., reference product vs. biosimilar or lot-to-lot). STC Biologics’s business model is to form partnerships and research collaborations with well-established pharmaceutical companies, either in the branded or biosimilar sector and to increase access to those who can’t afford the branded equivalents.
About Ligacept: Ligacept is a therapeutic development company headquartered in Oak Brook, IL. The company uses cutting-edge technology to develop innovative biologics with a focus on oncology. The company is engineering unique biologics that enable the capture of ligands for therapeutic intervention.
