Amorfix, Epitomics collaborate to develop high-affinity monoclonal antibodies against cancer targets

Amorfix Life Sciences and Epitomics, Inc. announced today that they have entered into an agreement to develop high-affinity monoclonal antibodies against a number of targets for cancer. Amorfix has identified several disease specific epitopes (DSEs) on misfolded proteins with their proprietary ProMIS(TM) computational platform discovery technology, which will be used by Epitomics to generate highly specific monoclonal antibodies (mAbs). Epitomics, together with its partners, has successfully generated over a dozen humanized therapeutic antibody drug leads targeting immune diseases and cancers using RabMAb(R) technology and its proprietary Mutation Lineage Guided (MLG) humanization technology.

"Targeting misfolded proteins on cancer cells is a novel approach to developing treatments for cancers. The ProMIS(TM) technology enables the identification of DSEs likely present on cancer cells and should generate proprietary mAbs with greater selectivity and safety" said Dr. Robert Gundel, Vice President of Research and Development at Amorfix. "In addition, Amorfix's vast expertise in diagnostics puts us in a great position to develop companion diagnostics for patient selection and monitoring of clinical efficacy. We are very pleased to be collaborating with Epitomics, a company with a proven track record of success in developing clinical-grade antibodies."

"Epitomics' proprietary RabMAbs(R) platform is a proven approach to the generation of high affinity mAbs against peptide targets", said Weimin Zhu, Senior Vice President of Antibody Technology at Epitomics. "We are pleased that Amorfix has recognized the unique features and benefits of our RabMAb(R) platform for developing high quality and high affinity antibodies with the potential to recognize unique epitopes. We look forward to assisting Amorfix in building its product pipeline".