Vascular targeting

Vascular Targeting’, the leading concept at Philogen, is the targeted delivery of therapeutic agents to newly formed blood vessels at sites of disease.

The formation of new blood vessels, or ‘angiogenesis’, is a rare event in the healthy human adult, but is closely associated with various malignant or inflammatory disorders. Newly formed blood vessels are distinct from mature blood vessels at a molecular level, and Philogen has demonstrated that certain proteins, such as splice variants of the extracellular matrix proteins fibronectin and tenascin-C, are specifically expressed in the new vasculature and act as ‘Vascular Markers’ that can be used as targets to deliver a ‘Therapeutic Payload’ (any bioactive agent) to the vicinity of diseased cells.

Philogen’s technology allows for selective delivery of a therapeutic payload attached to a ligand (usually a monoclonal antibody) specific for a ‘Vascular Marker’, and thus enables accumulation of high concentrations of the therapeutic payload at the site of disease, while sparing the patient’s healthy tissues.

‘Armed Antibodies’ are used in Philogen’s next-generation approach. Importantly, ‘Armed Antibodies’ may result in the improvement of the therapeutic index of medicinal agents which are already present on the market, or which have been investigated as non-targeted drugs and have failed because of insufficient selectivity.

Philogen has generated an extensive portfolio of clinical stage ‘Armed Antibody’ products based on its strategic concept of ‘Vascular Targeting’.

SELECTED REFERENCES

Neri and Bicknell (2005) Nature Reviews Cancer, 5, 436-446.

Neri & Supuran (2011) Nature Reviews Drug Discovery, 10, 767-777.

Pasche & Neri (2012) Drug Discovery Today, in press.

Legend: Liver metastasis, with newly-formed blood vessels stained in red