Anti-L1CAM antibody: A novel efficacious immunotherapy for pancreatic and ovarian cancer patients

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Over 170’000 people in Europe and more than 570’000 people worldwide are affected by pancreatic and ovarian cancer. For pancreatic cancer there currently no efficient therapies available and most patients succumb to the disease within 1 year from diagnosis. In ovarian cancer, first line chemotherapy usually leads to good response rates, however tumors recur in 80-90% of patients and in most cases become resistant to conventional chemotherapy, leading to a low overall 5 year survival rate of only 40%. New effective treatments for pancreatic and ovarian cancer are therefore urgently needed. Elthera AG is a Biotech Start-up company created in 2016 in Switzerland with the goal of developing an anti-L1CAM antibody as a novel efficacious immunotherapy for the treatment of pancreatic and ovarian cancer. L1 cell adhesion molecule (L1CAM) is an adhesion molecule, which is expressed on pancreatic and ovarian tumors, and also on a variety of other tumor types including lung, breast, colon cancer and others. It has been shown to promote tumor progression by a variety of different mechanisms, e.g. by directly stimulating tumor cell proliferation and the formation of metastases, by promoting angiogenesis in tumors, and by mediating resistance of tumor cells to chemotherapeutic agents. We have identified a proprietary mouse antibody against L1CAM, which inhibits the cancer-promoting effects of L1CAM, such as tumor cell proliferation and migration and strongly and significantly reduces tumor growth in mouse models of ovarian and pancreatic cancer. The antibody has been humanized and optimized for affinity and stability and is now ready to enter preclinical and clinical development. If funded, the anti-L1CAM project will allow us to establish a GMP manufacturing process and produce a GMP batch of this antibody which will enable preclinical toxicology and clinical safety and efficacy testing.