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China & US based Harbour BioMed, a global biopharmaceutical company committed to the discovery, development and commercialization of novel antibody therapeutics in immunology and oncology, has announced the launch of Élancé Therapeutics.
Harnessing Harbour BioMed's proprietary HCAb-based bispecific antibody technology, Élancé aims to develop innovative therapies addressing key challenges in current obesity treatment, including muscle preservation and long-term efficacy.
Obesity affects nearly one billion people worldwide and is associated with serious health complications, yet current treatments remain inadequate for many patients. Despite recent advancements, challenges such as limited efficacy, lean mass loss, and post-treatment weight regain highlight the need for novel approaches that offer sustained benefits and better clinical outcome.
To address these gaps, Élancé is building a pipeline of bispecific antibody programs designed to improve weight loss outcomes while preserving lean muscle mass. By integrating dual-targeting strategies with enhanced safety profiles, these therapies have the potential to complement and expand upon existing treatment options, including various agonists of GLP-1 receptor, GIP receptor, and GCG receptor.
Élancé's pipeline includes multiple bispecific antibody programs in preclinical development, each designed to offer innovative mechanisms of action, including targeted hormone modulation and enhanced metabolic regulation. These programmes are supported by Harbour BioMed's validated HCAb-based bispecific antibody discovery platform, which has been successfully applied across multiple therapeutic areas.
In addition, Élancé will refine and expand Nona Biosciences' Hu-mAtrIx AI platform to support bispecific antibody discovery, with AI applications guiding antibody sequence discovery, enrichment, optimisation, bispecific geometry design, and developability/immunogenicity/pharmacokinetics (PK) assessments, as well as patient biomarker studies.
