Hemogenyx Pharmaceuticals Plc (LSE: HEMO), the biotechnology company developing novel therapies to transform bone marrow, or blood stem cell, transplantation for the treatment of blood diseases, notes the recent share movement in the Company’s share price in reaction to a premature disclosure which the company regrets and is not in accordance with the Company’s policies on the release of information.
The Company can confirm that it has filed a provisional patent application relating to the Company’s development of a new type of humanised mice with a chimeric mouse-human blood system that can be used to advance product development, as well as for other disease modelling and drug development.
First data results have shown that CDX bi-specific antibodies are capable of attacking and eliminating the blood cancer Acute Myelogenous Leukemia (AML) in vitro. Using these new humanised mice the Company is confident that it should be able to demonstrate that its lead product, CDX bi-specific antibodies, are effective in the treatment of (AML). Use of the humanised mouse model should facilitate developing and progressing the CDX bi-specific antibodies into human trials, in line with the Company’s development timeline.
AML affected about one million people globally in 2015 and resulted in 147,000 deaths. AML accounts for roughly 1.8% of cancer deaths in the United States with about 20,000 new cases diagnosed in the US and 18,000 cases in Europe every year.
Despite numerous advances in understanding of the biology and pathogenesis of AML, standard treatments remain unsatisfactory and initial treatment relies on intensive chemotherapy. Current transplantation treatments for patients with chemosensitive forms of the disease have only a 30% success rate, but many, often older, patients will not be healthy enough even to undergo such treatments. CDX bi-specific antibodies, will redirect a patient’s own immune cells to eliminate both AML and blood stem cells preparing a patient with relapsed/refractory AML for bone marrow transplantation. Directors believe that this product could replace traditional methods of treatment of relapsed/refractory AML and conditioning such as chemotherapy and radiation.
Dr Vladislav Sandler, CEO & Co-Founder of Hemogenyx, commented: “We are hugely excited by the first solid data that we’ve received testing the efficacy of CDX antibodies against Acute Myelogenous Leukemia. The results which show that they can attack and eliminate AML cells is a true breakthrough and a significant development in our process of developing CDX to become a universally available conditioning product for patients undergoing bone marrow transplants as a treatment for serious blood diseases.
“In addition the new type of humanised mice opens the door to extending our work into other disease models and specific drug development which we expect to be of great interest to large biopharmaceutical companies and could form the basis of a number of significant future collaborations.”
