Pipeline

CDR-Life’s pipeline is based on it’s unique antibody fragment platform. It includes a series of highly cancer-targeted and drug-based immunotherapies against intracellular tumor antigens for treatment of a variety of solid tumor malignancies. In addition, the company has a superior trispecific BCMA therapy positioned for partnering as well as a therapeutic antibody fragment for treatment of a blinding retinal disease, which is partnered with Boehringer Ingelheim.

Tumor-targeted immunotherapies

The emergence of immunotherapies has changed the game in treatment of cancer over the past decades. However, lack of targeting tumor tissue only is severely limiting the potential of these therapies.

Targeting tumors only with MHC-specific antibodies

Contrary to classical surface antigens, some intracellular antigens are highly tumor-specific. As part of the natural immune surveillance, intracellular proteins are cleaved into peptides that are presented on the MHC (Major Histocompatibility Complex) on the surface of cells including cancer cells. This natural mechanism provides access to intracellular antigens for antibodies if possible to generated high affinity and specificity antibodies against the small antigen peptides on MHC. CDR-Life has developed a platform technology to target these MHC bound peptides with antibodies that have unparalleled affinity and specificity to peptide target of interest. As such, this technology opens the door to target an unexploited reservoir of highly attractive tumor antigens with antibody-based immunotherapies.

Combined with our proprietary bi- and tri-specific T cell engager scaffold with excellent drug-like properties, we are developing a several truly tumor-targeted T cell engagers.

A variety of solid tumor cancers have low mutational burden and poor response to immune checkpoint inhibitors. These novel T cell engagers bring more T cells specifically to the cancer cells and help eliminate them. Indeed, preclinical data show that our T cell engagers potentiate the cancer cell killing effect of immune checkpoint inhibitors. This observed synergy is likely to translate into greater clinical efficacy.

Targeting multiple tumor antigens

CDR-Life’s platform enables the development of T cell engagers that target two different tumor antigens. Such molecules are less vulnerable to tumor resistance development through antigen loss and are likely to increase response duration in cancers prone to antigen changes.