Pneumagen Demonstrates Preclinical Proof-of-Concept in Oncology for Neumonco, a Novel Carbohydrate Binding Module
15 October 2019 – St Andrews, Scotland – Pneumagen Ltd, focused on treating infectious disease and oncology by targeting the human glycome, today announced promising in vivo data in oncology from a novel Carbohydrate Binding Module (mCBM) generated from its proprietary GlycoTarge™ platform.
The study results demonstrate that Pneumagen’s oncology targeted mCBMs, known as Neumonco™, significantly inhibits tumour growth in an orthotopic mouse xenograft model of human ovarian cancer. In this study Neumonco was administered intraperitoneally into mice for the first time and tumour growth was measured using bioluminescence imaging. Results demonstrated tolerability and efficacy, yielding a statistically significant inhibition in tumour mass compared to the control group. In vitro data has previously demonstrated that mCBMs target cancer cells directly, reducing cancer cell proliferation, migration, and altering metabolism.
Pneumagen’s platform technology, GlycoTarge, has generated a portfolio of engineered oligomers of monomeric carbohydrate binding modules (CBMs), derived from carbohydrate-active enzymes. These CBMs are genetically linked in tandem, with a trimerisation domain, resulting in multivalent proteins (mCBMs) with greatly increased binding affinities for their respective glycan targets. Pneumagen is utilising this technology for a universal treatment of respiratory tract infections (RTIs) but has now shown this platform has direct utility in the emerging and exciting area of novel glycan-targeted cancer therapeutics.
Douglas Thomson, CEO of Pneumagen, said: “We are very excited by these results from our first in vivo oncology study demonstrating the efficacy of our platform. We now intend to progress our lead Neumonco candidate to the next stage of development as well as extending further the GlycoTarge platform in cancer.”
Pneumagens’ oncology research has been funded in part by a SMART:SCOTLAND grant from Scottish Enterprise. SMART:SCOTLAND awards aim to support ambitious R&D projects by SMEs based in Scotland.
About Pneumagen
Pneumagen is using its platform technology, GlycoTarge™, to develop glycan targeted carbohydrate -binding module domains (mCBMs) derived from bacterial sialidases as a new universal therapeutic modality for the treatment of respiratory tract infections (RTIs) and cancer. These engineered mCBMs have been shown to prevent and treat respiratory infections by binding to epithelial cell surface sialic acid receptors present in the respiratory tract, used by several pathogens for entry.
Pneumagen’s lead product, Neumifil™, is a first-in-class mCBM40 being developed for the universal treatment of Influenza Virus (IFV) and Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) infections. When administered intranasally in preclinical models, Neumifil™ has demonstrated prevention, treatment and post-exposure prophylaxis of IFV and RSV infection with no observed toxicity. Pneumagen’s mCBMs, in development for cancer, are known as Neumonco™. In vitro data have demonstrated that mCBMs target cancer cells, reducing cell proliferation, migration, metabolism and differentiation.
The Company is a spin-out from the University of St Andrews in Scotland and has access to world-class scientific expertise and capabilities in glycobiology. Please visit www.pneumagen.com for more information.
Contact details:
Katja Stout, Scius Communications
katja@sciuscommunications.com
+447789435990
Douglas Thomson, Pneumagen
douglas.thomson@pneumagen.com
+447748357352