Science
Emergence Therapeutics’ science is being harnessed to develop best-in-class or first-in-class antibody drug conjugates (ADCs) for the treatment of solid tumors. Our aim is to target difficult to treat tumors with high efficacy, lower risk of side effects and the ability to avoid resistance. Our lead investigational product is an ADC against Nectin-4.
Nectin-4 has been clinically validated as an ADC target by enfortumab vedotin, recently approved for the treatment of urothelial cancers by the US FDA. It is highly expressed by many different cancers and has a very limited expression in healthy tissues, especially compared to many other ADC targets.
Emergence is developing a next-generation Nectin-4 ADC, ETx-22, which has been optimized to increase efficacy and minimize toxicity – particularly skin toxicity which is dose limiting for enfortumab vedotin. ETx-22 has shown to be selective for tumor-expressed Nectin-4 and has tumor-specific deconjugation resulting in reduced toxicity. As a result, the ADC has an improved therapeutic index which gives potential for higher dosing, increasing the efficacy of the treatment.
Execution
Emergence Therapeutics aims to deliver on the potential of its lead ADC as well as its broader pipeline. Given the high unmet need in cancers with Nectin-4 expression our objective is to seek accelerated approval. ETx-22 will initially be developed for bladder and triple negative breast cancer as well as malignancies with medium and low nectin-4 expression levels, including ovarian, head and neck and lung cancer.
Partners
Emergence Therapeutics’ in-house expertise and team is supported by collaborations with world-class partners. These include:
An R&D collaboration with MimAbs SAS (Marseille, France) a biotechnology CRO for antibody research and development co-founded by François Romagné, co-founder and former CSO of Innate Pharma.
A collaboration with Marc Lopez, who discovered the nectin family of proteins, and Daniel Olive from the Cancer Research Center in Marseille (CRCM).
A licensing and collaboration agreement with SATT Sud-Est (the regional tech transfer office for the Aix-Marseille Université, CNRS and Inserm) through which the Company has been granted exclusive rights to a set of anti-Nectin-4 antibodies from Marc Lopez at the Cancer Research Center in Marseille (CRCM), France.
A license agreement with Mablink Bioscience SAS (Lyon, France) through which Emergence has access to novel linker technology.
A licensing and collaboration agreement with Heidelberg Pharma Research GmbH, a subsidiary of Heidelberg Pharma AG (Ladenburg, Germany). Through this agreement Emergence has access to Heidelberg Pharma’s proprietary ATAC technology including amanitin-based payloads. Heidelberg Pharma Research GmbH is also a founding investor in Emergence.