Nerviano Medical Sciences inks licensing agreement with Italfarmaco to develop and commercialize a novel peptide-drug conjugate

Nerviano Medical Sciences S.r.l. (NMS), a clinical-stage biotechnology company member of NMS group, announced the signing of a license agreement with Italfarmaco S.p.A. (ITF), a specialty pharmaceutical company, to develop and commercialize a novel peptide-drug conjugate (PDC).

Under the terms of the agreement, ITF will use NMS’s proprietary linker-payload technology to develop a novel PDC product candidate. NMS has implemented linker-payload GMP manufacturing and supply at a CDMO referred by NMS. ITF will be responsible for generating the target peptide and all non-clinical, clinical, and commercialization activities related to any resulting proprietary product candidates. Financial details of the agreement have not been disclosed.

“NMS’s cutting-edge linker-payload technology will allow us to develop new peptide drug conjugates for the treatment of oncology indications with high unmet medical need, leveraging Italfarmaco’s state-of-the-art GMP peptide production capabilities,” stated Christian Steinkühler, PhD, Italfarmaco Group’s chief scientific officer. “This is an important milestone in our mission to generate a highly diversified pipeline of innovative medicines.”

“We are pleased that ITF, a company with a long-standing heritage both from pharmaceutical and chemical sectors, has selected our linker-payload first platform for developing a truly novel peptide-drug conjugate. This is a significant step to broaden the applicability of our technology,” said Hugues Dolgos, PharmD, chief executive officer of NMS and NMS Group.

NMS is focused on discovery and development of innovative cancer therapies based on proprietary kinase and linker-payload platforms, with approved targeted drugs licensed to pharma companies and proprietary innovative small molecule candidate drugs undergoing clinical studies. The development programme will leverage NMS’s proprietary innovative linker-payload platform technology and ITF’s peptide-based oncology therapeutics technology. It will also allow NMS technology exploitation in conjugation with peptides. NMS’s linker-payload platform is carefully designed to generate more stable, efficacious, and safer drug conjugates to treat heterogeneous and chemotherapy-resistant solid tumours. The licensed linker payload includes optimized features, showing sub-nanomolar antiproliferative activity across a large panel of tumour cell lines and greater potency than MMAE and DXd (deruxtecan) in chemo-resistant cell lines expressing MDR system (Valsasina B. et al., Mol Cancer Ther 2023). In conjugation with targeting moieties, it shows an excellent therapeutic window and it is highly active in heterogeneous tumours thanks to the bystander effect, promotes immune system recognition of tumour cells to induce immunogenic cell death, and demonstrates activity in chemotherapy-resistant and poorly proliferating tumours.

Italfarmaco Group is a specialty pharmaceutical company engaged in the discovery, development, manufacturing and marketing of branded prescription and nonprescription products in more than 60 countries on 5 continents.

Nerviano Medical Sciences S.r.l. (NMS) is focused on discovery and clinical development of small molecule

NCEs for oncology. The company take innovative approaches on novel mechanisms of action and drug targets to bring first- and best-in-class personalized medicines to cancer patients.

NMS Group is the largest R&D company in Italy committed to the discovery and development of novel oncological therapies and through its three subsidiaries is the only institution able to manage the entire integrated R&D chain: from the first steps of the pre-clinical phase to the packaging of the finished product with more than 400 employees of whom more than half are highly educated individuals dedicated to innovative research, development and manufacturing.

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