Yufan Biotechnologies and Abound Bio Sign Multi-Year Agreement to Develop Next Generation CAR T-cell Therapies for Cancer
PITTSBURGH, Sept. 16, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Exhaustion of T-cells is a key reason why CAR T-cell therapy may fail to control cancer. Recent work led by Xuebin Liao, PhD, Professor of Pharmaceutical Science at Tsinghua University (Si et al., Cancer Cell 2020) shows that HPK1 (hematopoietic progenitor kinase 1) promotes T cell exhaustion via NFkB-Blimp1 activation and that blocking HPK1, either by gene knockout or by small-molecule inhibitors, is an attractive strategy to improve CAR T-cell immunotherapy. These innovative approaches are being evaluated clinically by Yufan Biotechnologies, co-founded by Professor Liao and Yan Zhang, CEO.
Yufan Biotechnologies has now partnered with Abound Bio, Inc, a life sciences company with world-renowned expertise in finding antibodies to direct CAR T-cells against cancer targets. Abound Bio was co-founded by Dimiter Dimitrov, PhD, and John Mellors, MD, CEO. The three-year partnership covers the incorporation of antibodies to novel cancer targets into the enhanced, HPK1-inhibited CAR T-cell platform.
"We are very excited by the potential to improve cancer therapy through the combination of Yufan's enhanced CAR T-cell technology and Abound's highly-specific antibodies," said John Mellors, CEO of Abound Bio.
"Dr. Dimitrov and Dr. Mellors are leading scientists. Our partnership with Abound Bio has the potential to improve CAR T-cell products for cancer therapy," said Yan Zhang, CEO of Yufan Biotechnologies.
The agreement covers 10 cancer targets over multiple years with shared inventorship and development rights for the new technologies.
Yufan Biotechnologies Co., Ltd. is a clinical stage cell therapeutics company, whose major products are CAR-T-cells with deletion of HPK1 gene to prevent cell exhaustion. Currently, a first-in-human clinical study of the XYF-19 HPK1-knock out CD19 CAR-T product is ongoing in patients with relapsed or refractory CD19+ leukemia or lymphoma (NCT04037566).
Contact Information:
Yu Wang, PhD, General Manager
402, Building D West, 528 Tianguba Road, Xi'an, China
Email: [email protected]
About Aboundbio (https://Aboundbio.com) Abound Bio is an early stage biotechnology company whose mission is to generate novel antibody-based biological therapeutics to meet unmet medical needs in the fields of cancer and infectious diseases. Abound Bio's industry leading antibody libraries offer size and physical property advantages that incorporate diversified binder formats into the appropriate therapeutic platform.
Contact Information:
Gabriella Merritt, Director of Operations
1401 Forbes Avenue, Suite 306, Pittsburgh, PA 15201
Email: [email protected]
SOURCE Abound Bio, Inc.
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