Australia based AdAlta Limited, the clinical stage drug discovery company and South Korea based GPCR Therapeutics Inc, a clinical stage biotech company have collaborated to evaluate AdAlta’s CXCR4 inhibiting i‑bodies as cancer therapeutics. The partnership will use GPCR Therapeutics’ proprietary combination inhibition approach.

AdAlta’s i-body platform is ideally suited to engaging an important class of drug targets called G-protein coupled receptors (GPCRs). One of these GPCRs is known as CXCR4. In addition to its role in fibrotic disease, CXCR4 is also known to be over-expressed in more than 23 cancers, representing a multi-billion dollar drug market. Attempts by others to develop CXCR4 inhibitors as cancer therapeutics have had limited success to date.

AdAlta owns a panel of i-bodies which inhibit CXCR4 signalling in different ways. The panel includes AD-214, AdAlta’s lead drug candidate which has been progressed to clinical development for fibrotic diseases.

GPCR Therapeutics has discovered that combining CXCR4 inhibitors with molecules inhibiting other GPCRs that are associated with CXCR4 in cancer can result in superior inhibition of CXCR4.

AdAlta’s CEO and Managing Director, Tim Oldham, commented, “Through the program, we aim to demonstrate that AdAlta’s i-bodies, when combined with other GPCR inhibitors can have enhanced therapeutic outcomes in cancer, in comparison with the typical approach of inhibiting individual GPCRs. This collaboration is consistent with our strategy of expanding the commercial use of our i-bodies in a cost-effective way.”