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ADC Therapeutics to develop next-generation masked antibody drug conjugates (ADCs), incorporating Adagene’s SAFEbody™ technology, with potential utility across multiple tumor types
Collaboration enables focus on targets in which healthy tissue expression precludes development of ADCs incorporating traditional antibodies
Lausanne, Switzerland and Suzhou, China, April 24, 2019 – ADC Therapeutics, an oncology drug discovery and development company that specializes in the development of proprietary antibody drug conjugates (ADCs), and Adagene Inc., an antibody engineering and discovery company, today announced that they have entered into a discovery collaboration and license agreement. ADC Therapeutics will use Adagene’s SAFEbody™ technology to generate a masked antibody that will be combined with ADC Therapeutics’ pyrrolobenzodiazepine (PBD) cytotoxic payload technology for the development of a novel ADC against a solid tumor target.
Adagene has developed the SAFEbody technology to produce masked antibodies that are activated to bind to an antigen in the tumor microenvironment by factors present in tumor tissues but not in healthy tissues. This enables enhanced specificity for targeting of an ADC and minimizes off-target toxicity on healthy cells, potentially enhancing the therapeutic index of the ADC.
