AbClon Signs Agreement with Contract Research Organization (CRO) for Blood Cancer CAR-T Treatment
AbClon Signs Agreement with Contract Research Organization (CRO) for Blood Cancer CAR-T Treatment
Seoul, Korea, March 20, 2019 — AbClon announced the signing of an outsourcing agreement with C&R Research, a leading CRO in Korea, for clinical protocol development and Investigational New Drug (IND) application.
AbClon had previously announced the successful development of a candidate drug for blood cancer CAR-T treatment (AT101) on March 6. AT101 is a new CAR-T treatment for B-cell leukemia and lymphoma. It targets CD19 protein as does other CAR-T treatments, Kymriah (by Novartis) and Yescarta (by Gilead), but AT101 has the advantage of being deimmunized compared to others due to the use of the NEST platform, the basis technology for AbClon. The company is planning a prompt clinical entry for AT101 with C&R Research.
An AbClon official mentioned, “We have acquired the Switchable CAR-T original technology, which overcomes the disadvantages of the existing CAR-T medication such as toxic and disease scalability. We plan to use the technology in developing a next-generation CAR-T treatment product for ovarian cancer (AT501) with Seoul National University College of Medicine.”
CAR-T drug is receiving global attention as a high-potential drug that is expected to grow 54 percent annually over the next 11 years. Kite Pharma and Juno Therapeutics, which possessed the phase 1 pipeline, were acquired both acquired at a great amount: by Gilead Science for 11.8 billion USD, and by Celgene for 8 billion USD, respectively.
AbClon CEO Jong Seo Lee stated, “We are looking forward to the successful clinical trial of AT101 with C&R Research, a representative CRO that has conducted more than 1,200 clinical trials and licensing procedures for 20 years. Since, unlike patients in the western countries, Korean blood cancer patients are not getting benefit from the CAR-T treatment yet, we will launch AT101 as soon as possible.”
