Protein Design Labs Announces Publication of Research Showing Extended Half-Lives of Antibodies
Thursday February 19, 4:01 pm ET
FREMONT, Calif., Feb. 19 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Protein Design Labs, Inc. (PDL) (Nasdaq: PDLI - News) today announced that the Journal of Biological Chemistry has published results of research in which PDL scientists produced a significant extension of the serum half-life of human antibodies. The article entitled "Engineered Human IgG Antibodies with Longer Serum Half-lives in Primates," by Paul R. Hinton and other PDL researchers, was published on-line on December 29, 2003, and is published in print in the current issue of the journal.
Human and humanized antibodies typically have a serum half-life of approximately three weeks in humans. Maintaining serum half-life represents an important element of determining and providing appropriate drug exposure in the body. PDL researchers, led by Naoya Tsurushita, Ph.D., engineered variants of human IgG antibodies with an approximate doubling of serum half-life from about two to about four weeks in rhesus monkeys. If further research can confirm a corresponding doubling of serum half-life in humans from three to six weeks, the current work could form the basis of attempting less-frequent dosing of patients who suffer from autoimmune diseases or other chronic conditions.
In the PDL study, three groups of four rhesus monkeys were given either control or one of two engineered IgG antibodies by intravenous infusion. Both of the engineered antibodies were maintained at higher levels than control IgG antibody throughout the study. Pharmacokinetics analysis indicated that the terminal elimination half-life of the two engineered antibodies relative to the control antibody was nearly doubled from 15 days to 27 days. The authors of the paper concluded that monoclonal antibodies with longer serum half-lives may be of significant benefit to patients undergoing long-term antibody therapy, due to reduced frequency of administration. The authors also noted that the technology developed in the study may be applicable to the extension of the serum half-lives of Fc fusion proteins, which in addition to antibodies, also represent an important class of protein therapeutics.
Richard Murray, Ph.D., Vice President, Research, PDL, said, "We are delighted that Dr. Tsurushita and his colleagues have produced such a potentially significant advance in the evolution of monoclonal antibodies as therapeutics. We believe this technology could readily be applied to both our own and our partners' therapeutic antibodies."
PDL has filed patent applications covering these discoveries... |
