RE: Affyxell New Investors23 Aug 2022 08:30
Good spot Gadgie
Daewoong Pharmaceutical and Avacta plan to invest the secured funds in the development of new drugs. The field that both companies are focusing their capabilities on is next-generation cell gene therapy. Based on Daewoong Pharmaceutical's mesenchymal stem cell platform 'DW-MSC' technology, we developed 'AffyXell', a fusion of Avacta's affimer platform technology, a type of non-immunoglobulin scaffold protein, to strengthen immune regulation function. do. In the field of cell and gene therapy, it plans to create a therapeutic that overcomes the limitations of existing antibodies and stem cells.
By combining the two technologies, it is possible to develop therapeutic agents for immune and autoimmune diseases. It is thanks to the immunomodulatory function of DW-MSC and the target activity regulation function of Apimer. DW-MSC overcomes the short lifespan and productivity limitations of the existing adult tissue-derived mesenchymal stem cells, and Apimer has the same role as an antibody, but has an advantage in tissue delivery due to its low price and small size.
The pipeline attracting industry attention is AFX001. Daewoong Pharmaceutical and Avacta are developing AFTX001 for organ transplant rejection and graft-versus-host disease. It plans to complete preclinical trials by next year and start an IND application for phase 1 clinical trials in the second half of that year. We confirmed the final excellent drug apimer that can exhibit antagonistic action against mouse and human target proteins, and introduced it into DW-MSC to construct the apicell cell line.
Meanwhile, Daewoong Pharmaceutical and Avacta succeeded in attracting 8 billion won in Series A investment last year. Apicell Therapeutics is a joint venture established in February 2020 by Daewoong Pharmaceutical and Avacta Corporation by granting technology licenses to both companies for the purpose of researching function-enhanced stem cells and developing therapeutics based on them.
Apicell Therapeutics strengthened its capabilities by collaborating with Samsung Seoul Hospital in May to exchange trends and technical information in the field of gene-transduced mesenchymal stem cell therapy, and to research national projects related to cell and gene therapy development.
2023 looks very good for Avacta