Nammi Therapeutics Unveils Two Novel Immunotherapies at AACR Conference

News provided by

Apr 09, 2021, 11:00 ET

LOS ANGELES, April 9, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Nammi Therapeutics, Inc. (Nammi), an LA-based immunotherapy company, announces its first two cancer drug candidates, one from each of Nammi's distinctive drug development platforms, Nammisomes and Masked ImmunoCytokines (MIC). Nammi is presenting the lead products for each platform in two posters at the 2021 annual American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Conference. The posters will be available on the conference website April 10-June 21, 2021. The therapies being presented are selected products initiating GMP manufacturing and IND-enabling studies. Both of Nammi's platforms embody our 3 core principles:

The redundancy of immune regulatory pathways requires synergistic combinations for robust and broad efficacy of immuno-therapies in cancer;
Potent immune stimulators must be dampened while in circulation to avoid systemic toxicities; and
Optimal therapies will employ mechanisms to selectively deliver and activate immune cells within tumors to focus on killing the tumor rather than healthy tissue.

Nammi's Nammisome platform combines immune modulating prodrugs into lipid nanoparticles enabling selective delivery to tumors. A second immunotherapy platform called Masked ImmunoCytokines (MICs) was acquired by a recent merger with Qwixel Therapeutics. MICs employ interferons, that have both direct anti-tumor cytotoxic activity as well as broad immune stimulating activity, and focus the potent effects by fusion to an anti-tumor targeting antibody and masking of the interferon so that it is only activated in the tumor microenvironment

QXL138AM: Poster #1726 highlights preclinical validation of our first in class MIC comprised of a CD138-targeted antibody fused with Interferon alpha (IFNα) that is masked with a tumor-selectively releasable peptide. CD138 is expressed in multiple myeloma as well as many different solid tumor indications including breast, colon, hepatic, ovarian, urothelial, and head and neck cancers.

NTI-55: Poster #1581 highlights preclinical validation of NTI-55, a novel combination of validated immune modulator lipid prodrugs, including a TLR7 agonist and an A2AR inhibitor, that stimulates an immune response and blocks an important tumor-derived immune checkpoint. These are broad based mechanisms that provide potential for NTI-55 in all solid tumor indications. These lipid prodrugs are assembled into lipid nanoparticles called Nammisomes that reduce systemic exposure to the immunotherapies while synchronizing delivery to, and activation at, the tumor sites.

"While strikingly distinct in design, the two approaches elegantly exemplify the vision of Nammi to develop immunotherapies that focus the immune system on anti-tumor activity while sparing patients from toxicities associated with systemic immune activation. We also believe there is a strong potential for synergy in combining the drugs to triangulate their immune activation for even more robust efficacy", said David Stover, Ph.D., President and CEO of Nammi.

Nammi has raised over $10M to date from Founders and Angel investors to drive preclinical development of both platforms. Nammi foresees filing INDs for both lead programs in mid-2022. Additional pipeline products, stemming from both the Nammisome and the MIC platforms, are in lead selection stage.