Garching, Germany and Halle, Germany – 24 March 2016 – ITM Isotopen Technologien München AG (ITM), a specialized radiopharmaceutical company, and Scil Proteins, the expert company in Affilin®-based protein engineering, today announced they have entered into a partnership covering the field of targeted radio conjugates.
Under the terms of the agreement the partners plan to cover a number of programs for the discovery and development of novel targeted radio conjugates for imaging and therapy purposes, in a variety of indications. Scil Proteins will be responsible for the discovery and design of the radio conjugates based on its proprietary Affilin® platform, while ITM will use its radioisotope technology and be responsible for later-stage development and commercialization of the resulting products. The first program has commenced in the area of targeted cancer treatment.
Henning Afflerbach, CEO of Scil Proteins commented: “ITM has outstanding capabilities and deep expertise in targeted radionuclide imaging and radionuclide therapy and this collaboration reinforces our leadership in the generation of targeted carriers as homogenous products specifically tailored to imaging and therapy applications.”
“We have been impressed by the potential of Scil’s platform to deliver compounds with precisely engineered carriers”, added Steffen Schuster, CEO of ITM. “This enables us to select the compounds half-lives, short-term for imaging applications and longer-term for therapeutic applications – a perfect fit to our precision oncology strategy.”
Affilin®-based biomolecules are derived from human scaffold proteins and have high stability, affinity and specificity making them ideal for a range of applications, including those where antibodies have limitations, thus broadening the potential of biotherapeutics.