Harbour BioMed Announces Poster Presentation on the Novel Bispecific Antibody PD-L1xCD40 at Upcoming American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Annual Meeting

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., ROTTERDAM, Netherlands and SUZHOU, China, April 6, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Harbour BioMed ("HBM", HKEX: 02142), a global biopharmaceutical company committed to the discovery, development, and commercialization of novel antibody therapeutics, today announced that the poster presentation on HBM9027, a novel PD-L1xCD40 bispecific antibody with excellent efficacy and safety profile for cancer therapy, will be presented at the American Association for Cancer Research Meeting (AACR 2022) in New Orleans, Louisiana from April 8-13, 2022.

Dr. Jingsong Wang, Founder, Chairman and CEO of Harbour BioMed, said, "We continue to leverage in-house technology platforms and strong research and development capabilities, exploring novel therapeutics on a global basis. The novel PD-L1xCD40 bispecific antibody was generated by Harbour HBICE^® platform. It demonstrated unique mechanism of action, potent anti-tumor efficacy and superior safety profile, which is an innovative DC/myeloid cell bispecific engager for next-generation immunotherapies."

Details and highlights for the poster presentation:

Session Title: Development of A novel PD-L1xCD40 Bispecific Antibody with Excellent Efficacy and Safety Profile for Cancer Therapy

Session Category: Preclinical Immunotherapy

Abstract Number: 4398

Poster Number: 5559

Summary:

The novel PD-L1xCD40 bispecific antibody was generated by Harbour HBICE^® platform. It demonstrated unique mechanism of action, potent anti-tumor efficacy and superior safety profile, which is an innovative DC/myeloid cell bispecific engager for the next generation of immunotherapies.

• Mediates both PD-1/PD-L1 inhibitory pathway and CD40 agonistic pathway to achieve synergistic anti-tumor immune responses
• Combination effects on both myeloid cells and lymphocytes in the innate and adaptive immune systems by stimulating APC cells and relieving the immunosuppression on T cells.
• Potent in vivo anti-tumor efficacy and remarkable in vivo stability with long half-life
• Preclinical toxicology studies indicated that the crosslinking-dependent CD40 activation can overcome the liver and systemic toxicity of traditional anti-CD40 monoclonal antibody

CD40 is expressed by antigen-presenting cells, myeloid lineage cells, endothelial cells, and some tumor cells, playing a fundamental role in connecting innate and adaptive immunity. CD40 agonist antibody has already shown promising efficacy in solid tumors in clinical trials. However, the further development of CD40 antibody was impeded by the severe toxicity. Using HBM's proprietary fully human HBICE bispecific technology and Harbour Mice platform, we discovered a crosslinking dependent PD-L1xCD40 bispecific to provide novel solutions for cancer immunotherapy from both efficacy and safety angles. The development of PD-L1xCD40 bispecific HBICE^® further expands HBM's bispecific immune cell engager into the cutting-edge DC/myeloid cell engager field and demonstrates HBICE^® platform's versatile geometry formats and plug-and-play advantages.

About HBICE^®

Harbour HCAb platform can generate diverse and stable fully human Heavy Chain only Antibodies (HCAbs) and derived human VH single-domain moieties, enabling us to make novel multi-specific and multi-valent antibodies in simplified structures with relatively smaller molecule size and fewer number of polypeptide chains. On top of this, we have established proprietary HBICE^® (HCAb Based Immune Cell Engagers) platform to quickly develop multi-specific antibodies that redirect immune cells to the tumor microenvironment (TME) to eradicate tumors.

HBICE^® molecules recognize and bind both specific tumor-associated antigens (TAA) on tumor cells and CD3 or co-stimulatory molecules on immune cells such as T cells or NK cells, resulting in efficient and selective activation of immune cells in the TME, thereby preventing non-specific activation of peripheral immune cells. Besides, HBICE^® technology provides the flexibility to generate molecules with different architectures and avidity to achieve different mechanisms of action that are unachievable by combo therapies.

About Harbour BioMed

Harbour BioMed (HKEX: 02142) is a global biopharmaceutical company committed to the discovery, development and commercialization of novel antibody therapeutics focusing on immunology and oncology. The Company is building its robust portfolio and differentiated pipeline through internal R&D capability, collaborations with co-discovery and co-development partners and select acquisitions.
 
The Company's proprietary antibody technology platforms Harbour Mice^® generate fully human monoclonal antibodies in two heavy and two light chain (H2L2) format, as well as heavy chain only (HCAb) format. Building upon the HCAb antibodies, the HCAb-based immune cell engagers (HBICE^®) are capable of delivering tumor killing effects unachievable by traditional combination therapies. Integrating Harbour Mice^® with single B cell cloning platform, our antibody discovery engine is highly unique and efficient for development of next generation therapeutic antibodies.  

SOURCE Harbour BioMed