Hummingbird Bioscience published in January 2020 preclinical data of its lead candidate, HMBD-001, in Molecular Cancer Therapeutics.
Innovative biotherapeutics company, Hummingbird Bioscience, pioneering the discovery and development of new breakthrough precision antibody therapeutics for difficult-to-treat conditions announced on 8th January 2020 the publication of preclinical data for, HMBD-001, an anti-HER3 antibody. The results were published in Molecular Cancer Therapeutics, a high-impact peer-reviewed American Association of Cancer Research journal.
HER3 is a member of the EGFR tyrosine kinase receptor family, which is responsible for driving cancer cell division and growth. It is well-known to be associated with over half of colorectal and gastric cancers, as well as at least one third of all breast cancers. HER3 is also involved in the progression of various tumour types and acquired resistance to EGFR and HER2 cancer therapies such as cetuximab and trastuzumab respectively.
Developed as part of Hummingbird Bioscience’s proprietary Rational Antibody Discovery Platform, HMBD-001 is a specific anti-HER3 neutralizing antibody that will inhibit HER3 heterodimerization with both EGFR and HER2.
The findings demonstrated superior tumour growth inhibition by HMBD-001 regardless of how HER3 is activated when compared to current anti-HER3 drugs with various binding sites and mechanisms of action. HMBD-001 also showed potent efficacy in a broad panel of in vitro and in vivo tumour models that had high HER3 activity and oncogenic downstream signalling.
“Previous attempts to target HER3 with other drugs failed as they could not inhibit activation of HER3 effectively. The highly specific binding of HMBD-001 to a difficult-to-target region on HER3 allows us to completely shut off activation of this important cancer-associated protein,” said Dr Jerome Boyd-Kirkup, Chief Scientific Officer and co-founder, Hummingbird Bioscience.
“This preclinical data provides proof-of-concept and represents exciting therapeutic opportunities for us as we look to develop HMBD-001 in hard-to-treat conditions such as gastric, colorectal, lung and pancreatic cancers.”
In partnership with Cancer Research UK, Hummingbird Bioscience will be moving HMBD-001 to clinical trials for the treatment of HER3 driven cancer. Manufacturing of the material for the Phase 1 clinical trial of HMBD-001 is currently being carried out and expected to be completed in the second half of 2020. [APBN]