Tessa Therapeutics, an immunotherapy company dedicated to revolutionizing the treatment of cancer, announced the full acquisition of Euchloe Bio, a biotechnology company specializing in the development and commercialization of antibodies to treat cancer. Euchloe’s portfolio includes a number of highly potent checkpoint receptor antagonists and immune system agonists.
Since Euchloe Bio’s spin-out from A*STAR’s Singapore Immunology Network (SIgN), the company has advanced several antibody drug candidates for clinical trials including its suite of checkpoint inhibitors (PD1, PDL1, CTLA4, Tim3 and Lag3 antibodies). Euchloe has also developed a number of these projects in combination with Tessa’s Virus Specific T cell (VST) platform technology. Euchloe’s technologies show strong potential to increase the effectiveness of Tessa’s VST therapies and expand Tessa’s pipeline to a broader range of cancers. Euchloe is collaborating with Tessa on the development of next-generation chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) technologies that are expected to show high specificity and efficacy, for a superior safety profile.
Euchloe Bio has made significant progress in its antibody development program since Tessa’s initial investment in the company last year. The combination of the technologies and research & development capabilities of the two companies is expected to realize strong synergies. Euchloe’s focus will remain on the development and commercialization of antibodies as stand-alone and combination therapies, while research efforts will continue to be led by its founder, Dr Cheng-I Wang.
Andrew Khoo, co-founder and CEO of Tessa Therapeutics, commented on the acquisition “Tessa and Euchloe have worked closely together since Tessa’s initial investment last year. We are very excited by the progress of the Euchloe team, thus the full acquisition of Euchloe Bio was a natural next step for us. Euchloe’s capabilities will help us deepen our understanding and ability to modulate the complex immunological environment around solid tumors and further strengthen our clinical trial pipeline.”
Associate Professor John E. Connolly, Chief Scientific Officer of Tessa Therapeutics, said “I have known Dr Wang for many years and he is a leader in his field. Euchloe Bio’s strong expertise and extensive range of proprietary antibodies is an excellent complement to Tessa’s existing portfolio. The strong pre-clinical data we are seeing suggests that the combination of our technologies has strong potential to deliver further breakthroughs in cancer immunotherapy.”
Dr Cheng-I Wang, founder of Euchloe Bio, said “We are delighted to complete our integration with Tessa Therapeutics, with whom we have been collaborators for some time. Tessa’s VST platform has proven its ability to extend immunotherapy treatment to solid tumors and I am excited by the promise of combining our different approaches. I look forward to working as a part of the Tessa team to deliver a real change in the lives of cancer patients.”
Filed Under: Drug Discovery
