AAX Biotech, a biotechnology company specialising in antibody therapeutics, and Vascurie, a biopharmaceutical company developing treatments for central nervous system (CNS) tumours, have announced a new collaboration in the field of neuro-oncology.
The collaboration will use AAX’s Seqitope platform and automation infrastructure to speed up the characterisation of therapeutic antibodies. AAX will use Seqitope, which has the capacity for high-throughput epitope mapping, to characterise Vascurie’s established antibody candidates against CD93, a new neuro-oncology drug target.
Seqitope integrates both amino acid-level epitope insights and the capability to process a significant number of antibodies simultaneously. This aids and accelerates the development of new therapies. Additionally, following demand for technologies that accelerate drug discovery, AAX has installed an advanced automation robot to assist with data workflows.
The newly announced collaboration with Vascurie will utilise all of AAX’s expanded capabilities in antibody characterisation.
Daniel X Johansson, CEO and Chief Scientific Officer of AAX, said: “The ability to generate high-resolution epitope data at true high throughput represents a significant advance for antibody discovery and development. With Seqitope and our new robotic platform, we can now characterise up to 100 antibodies in parallel, providing Vascurie with rapid, high-quality insights to support its neuro-oncology programmes.”
Vascurie’s lead candidate VDL-309, which targets CD93, is currently undergoing preclinical studies and could be used to treat high-grade gliomas and brain metastases. The company aims to submit Investigational New Drug (IND) and Clinical Trial Applications (CTA) to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for VDL-309 in 2027.
“This collaboration strategically accelerates our initiative to develop monoclonal antibodies targeting CD93,” said Jonas Ekblom, CEO of Vascurie. “By enabling multiplex parallel analysis of our proprietary molecules, this comprehensive approach will rapidly generate critical insights into the molecular pharmacology of our lead candidate, VDL-309, and other antibodies with distinct biomedical properties.”
