Hummingbird and Synaffix in $150m ADC deal

Under the deal, Synaffix can earn up to $150m, including upfront and milestone payments, plus royalties on net sales if the ADC resulting from the partnership will be granted market authorisation. For the target licensed, Hummingbird Bioscience is granted rights to utilise Synaffix proprietary ADC technologies, which bind a hydrophilic linker to an antibody’s glycan sites and allows coupling of different linker-payloads to the linker. No further information was available on the nature of the novel cancer target.

Hummingbird Bioscience combines computational and systems biology with wet lab drug discovery to discover and clinically develop antibody drugs to treat difficult to treat indications. The company is currently developing two assets in Phase I tests: HMBD-001, a humanised anti-HER3 monoclonal antibody targeting a novel epitope on HER3, and HMBD-002, a humanised anti-VISTA IgG4 monoclonal antibody.

Synaffix BV provides three platforms to enable development of ADC product candidates: GlycoConnect, HydraSpace and toxSYN. According to the company, the Synaffix platform enables a rapid timeline to clinic due to the established supply chain of technology components. Granted patents covering Synaffix’ technology provide end-to-end protection of the manufacturing technology as well as the resulting products through at least 2035. GlycoConnect is a clinical-stage conjugation technology that exploits the native antibody glycan for site-specific and stable payload attachment and is tunable to DAR1, DAR2 or DAR4 formats. HydraSpace is a clinical-stage compact and highly polar spacer technology that is designed to further enhance therapeutic index, particularly with hydrophobic payloads. toxSYN is a linker-payload platform that spans key, validated MOAs for ADC product development, including SYNtecan E and SYNeamicin G, and other linker-payloads.