Humanized antibodies and Queen's patents

PDL BioPharma, Inc (PDLI) and Humanized Antibodies

 In industry (Pharma and biotech), humanized antibodies seems to be the direction many companies are taken. What is a humanized antibody? Well, it is usually a monoclonal antibody made in a non-human. The peptide sequence of the antibody has been modified to be more “human-like”, so that when you use it for treatment in cancer for example, it will not trigger your own immune system  to attack.  This is big, because this means you can create a lot of this antibody in a mouse or a larger animal for that matter, at a lower cost and it is more likely to work in humans. This little company PDL Biopharma was a head of the group in that it has already licensed and is receiving royalties of their product.
I don’t know what they are going to do in the long run, but right now they are sitting pretty collecting royalties! The most recent one I saw in the news is from Reuters “PDL Biopharma Inc to receive royalties on sales of Genetech’s Pertzumab (http://www.reuters.com/finance/stocks/PDLI.O/key-developments/article/2559431 ).

Second Opinion Weekly reported it upgraded as of 8 days ago to “Long” and “Improving”. Thomson Reuters Stockreport gives it a positive rating of 9 out of a scale of 1-10.  Interesting it even has a dividend associated with it J

PDL BioPharma, Inc. (PDL) is a biotech company. PDL is engaged in the management of antibody humanization patents and royalty assets, which consist of its Queen et al. patents and license agreements with various biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies. The Company receives royalties based on sales of humanized antibody products marketed and may also receive royalty payments on additional humanized antibody products launched before final expiry in December 2014. It has entered into licensing agreements with numerous entities that are independently developing or have developed humanized antibodies under which it has licensed certain rights under its Queen et al. patents to make, use, sell, offer for sale and import humanized antibodies.  (Compliments of Scottrade)

-JR

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Genetech and personalized medicine

Genetech developed a drug against a specific subset of metastatic breast cancer, called HER2-positive mBC. This drug targets the HER2 receptor and blocks it from activating downstream signals by receptor dimerization. This is an awesome accomplishment, but what is made to sound so exciting, is really just Genetech combining the drugs they already have created, and see if they improve patient outcome even more so. It’s a pretty standard process, if you target the cancer in different ways, you are more likely to destroy the cancerous tissue.  This concept has already been used to combat AIDS by giving people a cocktail of drugs.

The drug they are calling Perjeta (which you have to love these names!) is a combination of  Herceptin (which interferes with HER2, part of the EGF-superfamily) and docetaxel (which interferes with the microtubule cytoskeleton).  The name Perjecta is derived from the concept of “personalized” medicine, where they examine the cancer and see what genes and hence proteins are mutated, and target them specifically to a person. This way if a person does not have a problem with the HER2 protein and pathway, they would not be treated with this drug combination.

Their data will be submitted for presentation at an upcoming medical meeting. And Dr. Barron, chief medical officer and head of Global Product Development  is excited that there is an improvement in survival in the CLEOPATRA (Clinical Evaluation Of Pertuzumab  And TRAstuzumab) study.  There are a whole bunch of side effects which include diarrhea, hair loss, low white blood cell count with or without fever, upset stomach, fatigue, rash and peripheral neuropathy (numbness, tingling or damage to the nerves). The most common Grade 3-4 adverse reactions (rate greater than 2 percent) were low white blood cell count with or without fever, decrease in a certain type of white blood cell, diarrhea, damage to the nerves, and decrease in red blood cell count, weakness and fatigue. But if you survive cancer, I expect people are willing to accept the side effects during treatment. Although, I’m not sure I’d be too excited about damaging my nerves.

Sources: http://www.biospace.com/News/genentech-says-perjeta-combination-increased/264814