Date posted 22 September 2020
Release date 20 September 2020
AdAlta Limited, a clinical stage biopharmaceutical discovery and development company using i-body technology to address challenging drug targets, is pleased to announce the extension of its collaboration with global life sciences company GE Healthcare.
AdAlta and GE Healthcare have confirmed that their collaboration to discover i-body candidates as diagnostic imaging agents for granzyme B will proceed to Stage 4 of a multistage collaboration. AdAlta has to date earned an initial milestone payment and research fees for the first three stages of the collaboration. These stages have yielded a panel of i-bodies with affinity, specificity and activity properties against granzyme B that warrant further development. GE Healthcare is a leading global medical technology and pharmaceutical company, providing a broad portfolio of products, solutions and services used in the diagnosis, treatment and monitoring of patients. Granzyme B is a key biomarker of response to cancer immunotherapy.
AdAlta CEO and Managing Director, Dr Tim Oldham commented “We are very pleased that our i-body platform has delivered a diverse panel of i-bodies and that GE Healthcare has entrusted us to continue discovery against this important target. The cancer immunotherapy market is growing rapidly and is expected to exceed US$100 billion in 2025, yet not all patients respond to these breakthrough treatments. Identifying responders early with an i-body enabled granzyme B imaging agent would significantly improve therapy selection and outcomes for the millions of cancer patients diagnosed world-wide each year.”
Dr. Mark Hibberd, Chief Medical Officer for GE Healthcare’s Pharmaceutical Diagostics business, said: “We are pleased to extend this collaboration and we continue to partner with companies like AdAlta to build a portfolio of molecular imaging agents for those disease biomarkers that will help speed up development of the next generation of immunooncology treatments.”
GE Healthcare has exercised an option under the collaboration agreement to progress to Stage 4 during which the panel of i-bodies selected in Stage 3 and those closely related to them will be further characterised, prior to GE Healthcare progressing a lead i-body into pre-clinical development. The research fees for Stage 4 will be paid in instalments over the six months commencing in November 2020.
