Dr M Deonarain is attending and giving the Stream Keynote Lecture “Advances in ADC Engineering” at Oxford Global's Biologics UK Conference on 21-22 March, 2022, London.
Antikor Biopharma Ltd is a private multidisciplinary biopharmaceutical company spun out from Imperial College London. The company is located at the Stevenage Bioscience Catalyst on the GSK site close to the life science clusters of Cambridge and London. The company is leveraging technologies acquired from Photobiotics (now a subsidiary company) in the development of more effective Antibody-Drug Conjugates in the treatment of numerous cancers and in other therapeutic areas.
Antibody Drug Conjugates (ADCs) are a relatively new type of therapeutic comprising a targeting molecule (an antibody) linked to a cytotoxic drug. When a patient is treated with an ADC, the antibody specifically directs the drug to the tumour cell and kills it. Traditional chemotherapeutic agents cannot be specifically targeted in this way. ADC targeted therapy is one of the most rapidly expanding areas in the biotech sector, with numerous significant partnership deals in place. Two current next generation ADCs, Kadcyla and Adcetris, have been approved recently in breast cancer and lymphoma, respectively, and other drug candidates are in the development pipeline. Major pharmaceutical companies are taking a real interest in this field, leading to licensing opportunities for biotechnology companies specialising in antibody-drug conjugation technologies.