DEP® Antibody Drug Conjugates

Starpharma’s DEP® technology provides enhanced therapeutic benefits to Antibody Drug Conjugates (ADCs) including greater homogeneity, site specific attachment, and higher drug antibody ratio (DAR), than conventional ADC approaches. 

The use of ADCs is an innovative and cutting-edge area in cancer therapy that continues to grow, and Starpharma has a number of partner programs in the area. Starpharma’s novel DEP® HER-2 Targeted ADC binds to the same target (HER-2) as the leading monoclonal antibody and ADC cancer therapies, Herceptin® and Kadcyla®, which had sales in excess of US$5 billion in 2021.

Benefits of DEP® ADCs

Starpharma’s DEP® technology has the potential to provide many benefits over existing ADCs, including overcoming many issues faced today by existing ADC approaches, including:

  • Greater homogeneity

  • Site specific attachment of drug conjugate

  • High affinity

  • The delivery of significantly higher payload levels than conventional ADCs

  • Overcome issues of payload solubility and aggregation.

antibody-dendrimer

Dendrimer - full antibody attachment

 

dendrimer-nanobody

Dendrimer - nanobody attachment

  

dendrimer-affibody

Dendrimer - affibody attachment

 

Targeting

  • Flexibility in use of targeting molecule Ab; Ab fragment; Non-Ab ligand; Small molecule

DEP® drug conjugate

  • Dendrimer size easily scalable to deliver desired payload number (8, 16, 32...)
  • Can deliver any type of payload - cytotoxic or ultra-toxic

Site specific attachment

  • Precise and reproducible
  • Ability to attach multiple dendrimers - high Drug Antibody Ratio (DAR)
 dep-adc-diagram

 

Internalization of dendrimer inside the target tumour cell

Targeted DEP® penetrate deep into the tumour (pictured below, right) and then binds and is internalized into tumour cells (picture below, left) for anti-tumour effect.

 dep-cell-adc-internalisation

 

DEP® ADC preclinical results

Starpharma’s DEP® HER-2 Targeted ADC demonstrated significant tumour regression and 100% survival in a preclinical human ovarian cancer model and significantly outperformed leading HER-2 products, Kadcyla®, a HER-2 targeted ADC, and Herceptin® itself.

dep-her2-graphs

RELATED ANNOUNCEMENTS

 

Partnering opportunities

Contact us if you are interested in establishing a partnership with Starpharma.
Business Development
T: +61 3 8532 2700
E: busdev@starpharma.com