Pacylex and Heidelberg Pharma Demonstrate Zelenirstat's Potential as Novel ADC Payload at World ADC Conference
TL;DR
Pacylex and Heidelberg Pharma's collaboration demonstrates zelenirstat's potential as a novel ADC payload, offering a competitive edge in cancer treatment with significantly enhanced potency.
Zelenirstat functions as an NMT inhibitor payload in ADCs, showing 20 to 1000-fold increased potency against cancer cell lines through targeted delivery mechanisms.
This innovative cancer therapy partnership advances targeted treatment options, potentially improving survival outcomes and quality of life for patients with difficult-to-treat cancers.
Pacylex transforms their oral cancer drug into powerful ADC payloads, achieving remarkable potency increases by combining novel mechanisms with cutting-edge antibody technology.
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Pacylex Pharmaceuticals Inc. and Heidelberg Pharma AG are jointly presenting positive data on zelenirstat as an antibody drug conjugate payload at the 16th Annual World ADC conference in San Diego. The collaboration demonstrates zelenirstat's enhanced potency when deployed as an ADC payload against multiple breast and prostate cancer cell lines, with improvements ranging from 20-fold to more than 1,000-fold compared to zelenirstat alone.
The significance of this development lies in the critical need for new ADC payloads, as only a limited number have entered clinical practice to date. N-myristoyltransferase inhibitors like zelenirstat offer a unique mechanism of action that targets multiple processes essential to cancer cell growth and survival. This novel approach could potentially overcome limitations of existing ADC payloads and expand treatment options for solid tumors.
Dr. Michael Weickert, CEO of Pacylex, emphasized the dual potential of zelenirstat, stating that the drug not only shows activity as an oral hematologic cancer treatment but also demonstrates markedly improved potency against solid tumor cells when used as an ADC payload. The company plans to aggressively explore zelenirstat and other Pacylex molecules as targeted ADC payloads, leveraging their novel mechanism of action and established clinical safety profile.
Zelenirstat has already demonstrated an acceptable safety and tolerability profile in Phase 1 studies involving patients with relapsed/refractory lymphoma and refractory solid tumors. The FDA has granted the drug both Orphan Drug Designation and Fast Track Designation for AML, with clinical studies in relapsed/refractory AML patients currently accruing well according to ClinicalTrials.gov ID NCT06613217.
Heidelberg Pharma brings innovative ADC technology to the collaboration, including their ATAC technology that utilizes Amanitin from the green death cap mushroom as a novel therapeutic modality. The combination of Pacylex's NMT inhibitor expertise with Heidelberg Pharma's ADC platform represents a strategic approach to addressing the limitations of current cancer therapies.
The data presentation includes results from multiple breast and prostate cancer cell lines using different ADC targeting molecules and linkers, showcasing the versatility of zelenirstat as a payload. Pacylex's family of NMT inhibitors includes 28 compounds with single-digit nM IC50s against human NMT1, suggesting a pipeline of potential ADC payload candidates beyond zelenirstat.
For additional information about Pacylex Pharmaceuticals, please visit www.pacylex.com, while details about Heidelberg Pharma are available at www.heidelberg-pharma.com. The collaboration between these clinical-stage companies represents an important step forward in expanding the arsenal of targeted cancer therapies, particularly for solid tumors where treatment options remain limited.
Curated from Reportable
