Nona Biosciences Enters into HCAb Based Drug Discovery Collaboration Agreement with Dragonfly Therapeutics

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Nov. 21, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Nona Biosciences, a wholly-owned subsidiary of HBM Holdings Limited committed to providing a total solution from "Idea to IND" ("I to I^TM"), today announced that it has entered into a collaboration agreement with Dragonfly Therapeutics based on Nona's proprietary fully human heavy chain only antibody (HCAb) transgenic mice platform to discover and develop fully human heavy chain only antibodies for bispecific/multi-specific therapeutic antibody generation.

Through the collaboration, Nona Biosciences will provide Dragonfly Therapeutics with access to the HCAb technologies as well as antibody generation services for the targets designated by Dragonfly Therapeutics. Financial terms were not disclosed. The collaboration is Nona's  follows a recently announced license and collaboration agreement with Moderna for nucleic acid-based immunotherapies for select oncology targets.  

Dr. Jingsong Wang, Founder, Chairman, and CEO of Harbour BioMed said: "The Dragonfly Therapeutics' collaboration recognizes the potential of both our proprietary platform and antibody discovery capabilities. We believe that our HCAb technology together with our accumulated extensive experience in innovative biologics drug discovery will help our partners generate differentiated therapeutic molecules benefiting the patient worldwide."

About HCAb

HCAb's patented technology generates novel "heavy chain only" antibodies, which are about half the size of a typical IgG. These antibodies carry IgG-like PK properties and Fc-domain functions without the need for additional engineering or humanization. Lack of light chain also minimizes the issue of light chain mispairing and heterodimerization. These characteristics enable the development of products with attributes not achievable by conventional antibody platforms. In addition, HCAb-derived multiple novel therapeutic antibody modalities, including single-domain antibodies, bi-, and multi-specifics, antibody-drug conjugates, CAR-Ts, or VH domain-derived diagnostic or therapeutic products, are also achievable using this platform.

About Nona Biosciences

Nona Biosciences (a wholly-owned subsidiary of HBM Holdings, HKEX: 02142) is a global biotechnology company committed to providing a total solution from "Idea to IND" ("I to I^TM"), ranging from target validation and antibody discovery through preclinical research. The integrated antibody and antibody-related discovery services with multiple modalities range from antigen preparation, animal immunization, single B cell screening, to antibody lead generation and engineering, developability assessment and pharmacological evaluation, leveraging advantages of Harbour Mice^® platforms and the experienced therapeutic antibody discovery team.

Harbour Mice^® generates fully human monoclonal antibodies in classical two light and two heavy chain (H2L2) format, and heavy chain only (HCAb) format. Integrating Harbour Mice® and a single B cell cloning platform, Nona Biosciences is focused on driving global inventions of transformative next-generation drugs. More information, please check www.nonabio.com 

About Dragonfly Therapeutics

Dragonfly Therapeutics is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company committed to discovering, developing and commercializing therapies that use its novel bispecific antibody technology to harness the body's innate immune system to bring breakthrough treatments to patients. Dragonfly has a deep pipeline of wholly owned preclinical candidates discovered using its proprietary platform that is progressing toward the clinic, as well as productive collaborations with Merck, AbbVie, Gilead and Bristol Myers Squibb in a broad range of disease areas.

SOURCE Harbour BioMed; Nona Biosciences