San Diego-based Ambrx says it’s getting an upfront payment of $15 million under a deal with Japan’s Astellas to help develop an undisclosed number of targets for antibody drug conjugates in cancer.
The collaboration could bring an additional $285 million in potential near and long-term research, development, regulatory and sales-based milestones.
A spokeswoman for Ambrx says the FDA’s approval of Genentech’s trastuzumad emtansine (Kadcyla) in February for treating HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer has triggered broader interest in antibody drug conjugates. The technology attaches an antibody or antibody fragment to a drug molecule, such as a chemotherapy drug. The antibody binds the cytotoxic molecule to target cancer cells.
Ambrx says it has developed a new approach to create conjugations that are highly stable and target tumor cells even more specifically, enhancing the safety and efficacy of antibody drug conjugates.
Ambrx says it has granted Astellas worldwide rights to develop and commercialize ADCs for oncology. The company says a portion of its milestone payments, as well as royalties on any net sales, are contingent on successfully commercializing products.
Author: Bruce V. Bigelow
In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here.
Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University.
Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.
View all posts by Bruce V. Bigelow
