IZB MARTINSRIED/MUNICH
the 2012 financial year. As its deputy chairman, Dr Werner has chaired the Supervisory Board on an interim basis since June 1 since Dr Jörg Neermann resigned as both a member and chairman of the Supervisory Board. Dr Werner, a management consultant and the former managing director of GlaxoSmithKline Germany, has many years of experience and in-depth expertise in the pharmaceutical industry, including in the field of oncology. He has been a member of 4SC’s Supervisory Board since June 2009 and has been deputy chairman of the Supervisory Board since June 2010. Dr Rüdiger, venture partner at Munich-based LSP Life Sciences Partners, CEO of Affectis Pharmaceuticals AG, also based in Planegg-Martinsried, and CEO of Kiadis Pharma BV, based in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, has many years of experience and broad know-how in the biotechnology industry. He has been a member of the Supervisory Board of 4SC AG since August 2005.
www.4sc.de
SuppreMol monoclonal antibody to treat rheumatoid arthritis
Autoimmune disease specialist company SuppreMol GmbH has formed a licensing agreement with the University Hospital of Regensburg to develop SM401, a humanised anti-IL-3 monoclonal antibody for early diagnosis and treatment of rheumatoid arthritis (RA). SuppreMol will advance preclinical development of SM401 for treatment of RA and will further validate a highly sensitive human IL-3 diagnostic assay for patient stratification. In a murine model for RA, SM401 has
Laboratory facilities at IZB in Martinsried, Munich.
demonstrated that it significantly reduces progression and severity of the disease. At the same time, levels of the inflammatory cytokines IL-6 and TNF-alpha, which are reduced by several established RA drugs, are also lowered. Furthermore, it has been demonstrated that IL-3 concentrations were only elevated at the onset of arthritis and fell to low levels during the course of the disease in the animal model. Using the newly developed IL-3 diagnostic assay, SuppreMol expects to develop a biomarker for the stratification of RA patients and also expects to begin clinical trials of SM401 in 2014. The anti-IL-3 monoclonal antibody was generated by the group of Prof Dr Matthias Mack at Regensburg University Hospital - Internal Medicine II following the discovery that increased levels of IL-3 indicate early onset and activity of RA. Prof Mack is a member of SuppreMol’s Scientific Advisory Board.
Early development of SM401 is being funded by a grant of €1.37 million from the
German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). The project was funded in Prof Mack’s laboratory through BayImmuNet, the Bayerisches Immuntherapie Netzwerk; the development of a therapeutic anti-IL-3 antibody including a highly sensitive IL-3 assay is supported by the BMBF within the Leading-Egde Cluster ‘m4 - Personalized Medicine and Targeted Therapies’ in Munich.
www.suppremol.com
EU FP7 grant for LEUKOCARE LEUKOCARE AG, a company providing technologies for protein stabilisation and biological surface coating, is to receive funding from the EU FP7 grant programme to participate in a four-year international research project aimed at developing a new blood apheresis device for in-vivo trapping of circulating tumour cells. These are cells that have detached from a primary tumour and circulate in the bloodstream, playing a significant role in spreading tumour tissue around a patient’s body. Currently only small numbers of CTCs can be isolated from blood sample volumes and to increase the number of CTCs, LEUKOCARE intends to develop an extracorporeal blood apheresis column to filter the patient’s whole bloodstream, increasing the sensitivity of cell counting by about 500-fold. LEUKOCARE’s expertise on coupling and stabilising biomolecules on medical device surfaces is needed to ensure high quality and sterility of the new device. LEUKOCARE will receive €810,000 from the €6 million grant over a period of two years to fund its developmental research. The project is expected to return a next-generation device in about four years’ time.
www.leukocare.com
IZB’s West 2 building at Martinsried. 32 sp2 Inter-Active July/August 2012
Further information
www.izb-online.de
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