Duality Looks Out For Hong Kong IPO To Finance ADC Trials

Duality Biotherapeutics from China has gone ahead and filed paperwork as far as a Hong Kong IPO is concerned, thereby looking out for an undisclosed sum so as to power a broad pipeline when it comes to antibody conjugates for approval of drugs.

Apparently, this filing goes on to extend the recent large number of IPO activity, which has extended beyond the US and into Asia.

It is well to be noted that Duality, which was established in 2019, has gone ahead and built up a pipeline comprising of 12 ADCs that were internally discovered, and interestingly, half of them happen to be in the clinic.

In addition to this, Duality has gone on to enter into deals with BeiGene, BioNTech, and Adcendo that can very well be worth over $4 billion. Interestingly, Duality is looking out to take a couple of bispecific ADCs and also one autoimmune ADC within human testing by 2026.

The biotech has gone on to name two BioNtech-partnered ADCs as core products. Apparently, one of the products, which is called both DB-1303 and also BNT323, happens to be a HER2-directed ADC, which, as per Duality, could be very much ready to file for a speedy approval as early as 2025.

Notably, AstraZeneca as well as ADC Enhertu, which is Daiichi Sankyo’s rival, happen to be already pretty well established; however, it is Duality that has gone on to spot a niche so as to call its own. Enhertu happens to be approved in patients having any solid tumor that goes on to offer high levels of HER2 and in HER2-low breast cancer.

Duality is targeting endometrial cancer initially throughout the expression levels and has even seen activities within ovarian, esophageal, as well as colorectal cancers.

It is worth noting that the other core product from Duality happens to be DB-1311, which is a B7-H3-directed ADC that is known as BNT324. Duality upon working with BioNTech is studying the candidate with regards to indications that include small lung cancer as well as prostate cancer. Interestingly, in other developments, Merck & Co. is creating another rival B7-H3 ADC along with Daiichi.

The biotech has also gone on to discuss its major products, primarily the ADCs, which happen to be aimed at HER3, TROP2, as well as autoimmune target BDCA2, in addition to a bispecific that happens to target B7-H3 as well as PD-L1. According to Duality, the BDCA2 as well as B7-H3xPD-L1 drug candidates may as well be first in class, however, when it comes to other areas, the biotech is going to come to market behind the frontrunners, thereby creating the significance of delivering the advantages that are claimed of the platform. Duality, just like many other ADC developers, has gone ahead and created a platform based on topoisomerase. Although that much is indeed familiar, biotech happens to contend with proprietary know-how along with implementation capabilities, which have helped it go ahead and come up with differentiators that include bispecific formats and also new payloads.

It is worth noting that the IPO filing goes on to reveal the details pertaining to Biotech’s activities, like the fact that BioNTech has already gone on to pay $21 million in terms of milestones tied to DB-1303 along with the potential challenges that it is facing. In another move that has come to the fore, a third party has, as a matter of fact, gone ahead and challenged some patent applications filed by Duality, thereby dragging the biotech into legal proceedings that too in China.