Pepscan announced that there is an important progress with a drug development program based on its CLIPS technology.
Bicycle Therapeutics team in the UK applied Pepscan’s CLIPS technology to identify a bicyclic CLIPS peptide that selectively binds to a protein (MT1-MMP) present on tumor cells.
A toxin payload has been linked to the high affinity bicyclic peptide to create a ‘Bicycle Drug Conjugate (BDC)’.
The compound, codenamed BT1718, appears to penetrate tumors rapidly. Because of its peptidic nature, BT1718 can be rapidly cleared through the kidney, which minimizes toxicity relating to payload mediated gastrointestinal and liver toxicity.
Superior efficacy of BT1718 has been reported to standard of care controls in multiple preclinical patient and cell-derived mouse xenograft models.
BT1718 will advance to the first stage of clinical testing in human patients; Cancer Research UK, the largest cancer charitable organization in the UK, will sponsor and fund the upcoming Phase 1 study.
CLIPS based lead program is aimed at a new therapy for the treatment of cancer. It confirms the potential of bicyclic '2-CLIPS' peptides as a new generation of biotherapeutics, offering antibody-like affinity and selectivity in a small, fully synthetic molecule.
CLIPS technology is used for the discovery of novel bicyclic 2-CLIPS peptides for therapeutic or diagnostic applications.
