A collaborative licensing relationship to develop prostate cancer imaging agents based on engineered antibody fragments

INGLEWOOD, CA, USA | October 12, 2009 | ImaginAb, Inc. and BZL Biologics, LLC have concluded a sublicense of BZL’s PSMA/huJ591 antibody technology for the field of diagnostic imaging for PET and SPECT. "ImaginAb is pleased to have completed this [sub]licensing agreement with BZL as we believe that huJ591 will form the basis of an excellent clinical product for the diagnosis and management of prostate cancer. BZL’s technology has extensive human data, and we believe that huJ591 in conjunction with our antibody fragment technology will produce excellent imaging agents for PET," said Dr. Christian Behrenbruch, CEO of ImaginAb. Dr. Robert Reiter, Professor of Urology at UCLA and ImaginAb’s Chief Medical Advisor further elaborated, "PSMA is an extremely significant target for prostate cancer and perhaps other solid tumors – we are excited to be validating antibody fragments against this target and plan to translate into the clinic in 2010."

"Our partnership with ImaginAb for antibody imaging with huJ591 is an important part of developing our PSMA intellectual property, and we believe that the imaging applications of our technology will result in a significant benefit to prostate cancer patient care by improving diagnostic accuracy and disease monitoring. We are also interested in working with ImaginAb to integrate imaging as part of a patient management paradigm for our PSMA-targeted therapeutics," commented Barry Silverstein, President of BZL Biologics.

About BZL Biologics

BZL Biologics, LLC is a privately held biotechnology company based in New York. Its lead program is based on antibody (Ab) targeting of PSMA, a unique cancer-related antigen that is present at high levels in all prostate cancers as well as the neo-vasculature of all types of solid tumors. This provides an exceptional platform on which to build very potent and exquisitely specific anti-tumor agents.

About ImaginAb

Founded in 2007 by UCLA Faculty (Dr. Rob Reiter and Dr. Anna Wu), ImaginAb, Inc. is an early-stage biotechnology company specializing in the development of engineered antibody fragments for diagnostic imaging and radioimmunotherapy. The company has a significant pipeline of clinical imaging agents under development oriented towards unmet needs in cancer and immunology. ImaginAb is also developing a range of pre-clinical (animal imaging) reagents for use with microPET and microSPECT systems.

SOURCE: ImaginAb