DUBLIN – Neotx Therapeutics Ltd. raised $45 million in a series C round to continue clinical development of an immuno-oncology agent that already has a long clinical history behind it. Its lead molecule, naptumomab estafenatox, is a fusion protein comprising an antibody fragment that recognizes the oncofetal antigen 5T4 and a bacterial “super-antigen” comprising a modified version of the Staphylococcal enterotoxin A.
Credit: bioworld.com
Israeli clinical-stage biotechnology company NeoTX Therapeutics has closed a $45 million Series C financing round. The Rehovot-based company is leveraging its proprietary Selective T cell Redirection (STR) platform to develop targeted anticancer immunotherapies.
To date, NeoTX has raised over $60 million. NeoTX plans to use the proceeds of the latest financing round to advance its STR platform for the treatment of advanced and metastatic solid tumors as well as to in-license new technologies.
NeoTX CEO Asher Nathan said, “With the funds raised in this financing, we intend to complete the dose escalation phase of the Phase 1b trial of naptumomab estafenatox (Nap) in combination with durvalumab and continue to develop our patented STR platform. Our platform, which uniquely leverages the body’s natural antibacterial immune response to selectively redirect T cells to kill the tumor, has the potential to be applicable in a variety of solid tumor indications and in combination with other immunotherapies. We look forward to the clinical advancement of Nap and expanding our platform in order to provide new options to patients suffering from advanced cancers.”
Credit: en.globes.co.il
Israeli company NeoTX, a biotech firm with a selective t-cell redirection (STR) platform for developing…
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Israel-based NeoTX has closed its Series C financing round with $45m raised; this brings the company’s total funding to $60m.
NeoTX chief executive officer Asher Nathan said: “With the funds raised in this financing, we intend to complete the dose escalation phase of the Phase 1b trial of naptumomab estafenatox (Nap) in combination with durvalumab and continue to develop our patented STR [Selective T cell Redirection] platform.”
The company uses the STR platform to improve the response rate of current immunotherapies targeting solid tumours. Nathan explains: “Our platform, which uniquely leverages the body’s natural antibacterial immune response to selectively redirect T cells to kill the tumour, has the potential to be applicable in a variety of solid tumour indications and in combination with other immunotherapies.”
Nap is NeoTX’s lead programme and it directly targets tumours expressing the 5T4 antigen, which includes many advanced and metastatic solid tumours. NeoTX licensed the drug from Active Biotech in 2016, and began enrolling and dosing patients in its Phase 1b study in October 2019.
In this study, Nap is combined with AstraZeneca’s anti-programmed cell death-1 (PD1) checkpoint inhibitor Imfinzi (durvalumab); this follows the signing of a February 2019 collaboration between NeoTX and AstraZeneca. NeoTX also believes its drug has promise as a monotherapy in various solid tumours.
Nathan commented: “We’re looking forward to bringing this therapy to patients suffering from advanced cancers that have thus far been unresponsive to therapy with checkpoint inhibitors alone.”
The company also wants to use this $45m funding to in-license further technologies and products.
Credit: Pharmaceutical Technology
NeoTX Therapeutics has nabbed a healthy $45 million third funding round as it looks to continue work on its early-stage cancer combo test and in-license new tech.
The Rehovot, Israel-based biotech is working on a Selective T cell Redirection (STR) platform for its oncology immunotherapies and now brings its total funding haul to $60 million.
NeoTX plans said in a brief update that it plans to use the series C proceeds to advance its STR platform “for the treatment of advanced and metastatic solid tumors as well as to in-license new technologies.”
Naptumomab estafenatox (aka Nap) is the lead compound in NeoTX’s STR platform and is designed to target the 5T4 antigen, which the biotech says is present on “many tumors.” The experimental drug was licensed from Active Biotech four years ago after it failed to help kidney cancer patients and was ditched by its original owner.
NeoTX is hoping it can brush off this flop and combine it with the right therapy to kick-start it into action. Part of the cash will be used for its ongoing, open-label phase 1 of Nap in combination with AstraZeneca’s checkpoint inhibitor Imfinzi (durvalumab) in solid tumors that have spread.
The trial started last year, and it “aims to establish the maximum tolerated dose in the dose-escalation Phase 1b study before advancing to a cohort expansion study.”
When first working on STR, Active Biotech said the platform in preclinical tests could boost the anti-tumor activity of checkpoint inhibitors (such as Imfinzi) and can “lead to long-lasting immunity against the tumor.” Studies will now try to prove this.
“With the funds raised in this financing, we intend to complete the dose escalation phase of the Phase 1b trial of Nap in combination with durvalumab and continue to develop our patented STR platform,” said Asher Nathan, CEO of NeoTX.
“Our platform, which uniquely leverages the body’s natural antibacterial immune response to selectively redirect T cells to kill the tumor, has the potential to be applicable in a variety of solid tumor indications and in combination with other immunotherapies. We look forward to the clinical advancement of Nap and expanding our platform in order to provide new options to patients suffering from advanced cancers.”
Credit: Fierce Biotech
The results were clear: Naptumomab estafenatox failed to prolong overall survival for renal cell carcinoma patients in a large trial, definitively enough that Active Biotech effectively shelved it in 2013.
But three years later NeoTX, a scavenger startup that had been digging through drugs that failed in hopes of finding a subpopulation with a biomarker that the original developer had missed, stumbled upon the data and saw the unexpected gem they were looking for.
Asher Nathan
“Their Phase I data was stellar, great Phase I, and then they had this Phase II that failed primarily because they added the wrong drug,” Asher Nathan, CEO and co-founder of NeoTX, told Endpoints News as he unveils $45 million in new financing.
Interferon alpha was “absolutely the wrong drug” to combine with naptumomab estafenatox as it negated certain qualities of the experimental fusion protein, Nathan said. More importantly, Active Biotech didn’t really know just the kind of potential they had in a platform tech that binds to the tumor and coat it with a bacterial “superantigen” that attracts an immune attack.
“This is a natural immune response as opposed to if you look at other technologies like bispecifics, where they gauge CD3 molecules, that’s something you’ll never find in nature,” Nathan said.
So the Israeli biotech licensed the drug from Active for $250,000 upfront, and has been collaborating to start a Phase I that tests a combo of nap and AstraZeneca’s checkpoint drug, Imfinzi (durvalumab).
Roger Kornberg
Roger Kornberg, a Nobel laureate, Stanford cancer researcher and longtime friend of Nathan’s, helped guide the company’s pivot to focus on this approach, which they call selective T cell redirection or STR. And longtime Bristol-Myers Squibb exec Marcel Rozencweig is onboard as CMO, leading a small office in Princeton, New Jersey in preparation for a trial expansion to the US.
They are enrolling patients with a wide range of solid tumors to the Phase Ib dose escalation trial — from pancreatic adenocarcinoma and ovarian cancer to prostate cancer and triple negative breast cancer — as naptumomab targets the oncofetal antigen 5T4.
Other drugmakers have mounted efforts to hone in on 5T4, ranging from Sanofi and Oxford Biomedica’s Phase III cancer vaccine to Pfizer’s early-stage antibody-drug conjugate to Genmab’s preclinical CD3/5T4 bispecific.
Marcel Rozencweig
NeoTX is also working on a second candidate hitting a different target specifically tailored to glioblastoma. They’ve brought David Reardon of Dana Farber on for that program, which also utilizes the bacterial component.
The team of around 20 has some powerful — if unconventional — backers. For the Series C, they enticed “one of the top 10 richest people in the world,” former Blackstone vice chairman Tomilson Hill, American businessman Paul Marinelli as well as Korean investor Andrew Kim.
Credit: Amber Tong
Dr. Asher Nathan, CEO of NeoTX talks about the company’s work developing immunotherapies for a wide range of solid tumors using their proprietary Selective T Cell Redirection (STR) platform. This technology enables therapies that bind a genetically engineered super antigen to the tumor surface which trigger a native, controlled immune response that can kill the cancer with potentially fewer side effects than currently available therapies. Asher discusses the company’s lead STR molecule, NAP, which is being developed to treat advanced cancers. NAP, which has potential as both a monotherapy and in combination with checkpoint inhibitors, is currently in a Phase 1B clinical trial in collaboration with AstraZeneca.
Credit: empoweredpatientradio.com
NeoTX Therapeutics has dosed the first patient in a Phase Ib clinical trial of a naptumomab estafenatox and Imfinzi (durvalumab) combination for the treatment of solid tumours.
Designed as immunotherapy, naptumomab stimulates the immune system to identify and kill tumour cells. The drug triggers certain T cells outside the tumour microenvironment and redirects the immune cells to attack the tumours.
In preclinical studies involving different tumour models, naptumomab demonstrated the potential for a synergistic effect with checkpoint inhibitors.
NeoTX Therapeutics licensed the drug from Active Biotech in 2016. As part of the licence agreement, NeoTX has to carry out the development and commercialisation of the drug in oncology indications.
Imfinzi is a checkpoint inhibitor developed by AstraZeneca. It is a human monoclonal antibody that inhibits the PD-L1 interaction with PD-1 and CD80.
Imfinzi has approvals for the treatment of unresectable, stage III non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and advanced bladder cancer. The drug is also being developed for various other solid tumours.
The open-label, multi-centre, dose-finding Phase Ib trial will investigate the safety and tolerability of naptumomab plus Imfinzi for treating advanced or metastatic tumours in around 45 patients who received prior therapies.
Credit: www.clinicaltrialsarena.com