Numab Therapeutics and Kaken Pharmaceutical have established a collaboration and option agreement focused on identifying a multispecific antibody candidate for inflammatory diseases. Numab will use its discovery and engineering platform to identify a candidate, to which Japanese specialty pharma Kaken retains a license and co-development option. No financial details were disclosed.
The collaboration with Kaken is Swiss biotherapeutics firm Numab’s second deal within the last few months. In March, Numab reported a research and option agreement with Japan’s Ono Pharmaceuticals to identify a multispecific antibody candidate for applications in immuno-oncology.
Numab is exploiting a plug-and-play discovery platform both in-house and with partners to generate a pipeline of stable antibody Fv fragments as building blocks for mono- or multispecific antibody fragment-based therapeutics. The firm has an ongoing partnership with Intarcia Therapeutics, focused on developing once- or twice-yearly mono- or multispecific antibodies targeting diabetes, obesity, and autoimmune indications. Numab also has an ongoing partnership with Tillotts Pharma to develop antibody-based therapies targeting tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α) against inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Lead IBD antibody fragment candidate ND009 is in preclinical development.
Numab’s in-house pipeline is headed by ND007, an anti-IL23RxCD3 bispecific antibody fragment candidate in development for chronic inflammatory disease indications.
