NBE-Therapeutics Announces Successful Validation of its SMAC™-Technology for the Generation of Antibody Drug Conjugates (ADCs)

Basel, Switzerland, February 21, 2014 – NBE-Therapeutics (“NBE”) today announced that it has presented the successful validation of its enzymatic SMAC™-Technology for the generation of potent next-generation antibody drug conjugates (ADCs) at the international World ADC summit 2014 in Frankfurt, Germany, this week.

NBE’s patent-pending SMAC™-Technology (SMAC = sortase-mediated antibody conjugation) utilizes highly selective sortase enzymes for site-specific and efficient conjugation of toxic payloads to therapeutic antibodies. SMAC™-Technology allows the generation of homogeneous ADC drug substances, representing an improvement to current clinical-stage ADCs that are heterogeneous also comprising molecules with undesired properties.

In proof-of-concept studies it was demonstrated that SMAC™ generated ADCs display the same potencies in cancer cell killing experiments as commercially available benchmark ADCs composed of identical antibody and toxin, even when significantly smaller amount of toxic payload was conjugated.

NBE-Therapeutics’ novel ADC technology has the potential to improve the therapy of cancer. The company is now planning to leverage its validated SMAC™-Technology for the development of a preclinical and clinical pipeline of next-generation ADC products, aimed at providing improved targeted therapies for difficult to treat cancers of e.g. breast, ovary, lung, colon and pancreas.