Abdera Therapeutics: utilizing radiopharmaceuticals to revolutionize cancer treatment
This week, Abdera Therapeutics announced a combined Series A and Series B financing, totaling US$142 Million. We are excited to see one of our portfolio companies attract quality investors and the capital to bring potential game changing therapeutics into the clinic and to patients.
Amplitude creates, builds and grows world-leading innovative precision medicine companies and Abdera is a great example of our strategy. Amplitude co-led the Series A and invested more in the Series B to build a leader in the antibody and radio-pharmaceutical space.
The company was founded in 2020 combining innovation from adMare BioInnovations and several Vancouver radiopharmaceutical efforts. The founding team of experienced drug developers had a vision to develop the next generation of antibody-based radiopharmaceuticals.
The goal was to develop new radiopharmaceuticals that were:
· Tuneable where their half-life could be optimized for tissue targeting while reducing their toxicity to other organs of the body, like the kidney
· Flexible where the antibodies could be paired with both alpha and beta-emitting isotopes creating multiple options for patient treatment
· Novel so that both clinically validated and unique cancer targets could be pursued
The company formally spun out of adMare BioInnovations in 2021 and was financed by Amplitude, Versant, Admare, Northview and Abcellera as early Series A investors. Leveraging an exceptional and experienced team in biology, drug development radiopharmaceutical, oncology and IP strategy, Abdera is building one of the leading radio-pharmaceutical companies in the world and Amplitude is excited to be support the efforts of the team.
What are radiopharmaceuticals?
Radiopharmaceuticals are a group of drugs that contain radioactive isotopes that can be used as diagnostic or therapeutic agents. Most people know radiation in the context of cancer therapy, where a doctor uses high doses of radiation to kill cancer cells. Radiation kills cancer cells through damaging their DNA but it also kills healthy cells, which can result in significant side effects for patients.
In the last several decades, scientists have demonstrated attaching radioactive isotopes to drugs, which can be more selective in killing cancer cells without damaging healthy cells. This field has generated a lot of interest in the past several years, with some notable financings (Rayze, Point SPAC, Fusion, etc.), billion-dollar acquisitions (Novartis Endocyte, Bayer Algeta, Novartis Advanced Accelerator Applications), and incredible results in patients
For example, the images above show the results from a clinical trial done in Germany using targeted alpha therapy, the same approach Abdera is using. The black dots on the left are cancerous tumors and as you can see in the images in the middle and on the right, the cancer is almost gone after the treatment.
When radiation is used, several types of particles can be used, including alpha and beta emitters. Historically, most radiopharmaceuticals used beta emitters as they were much more readily available and had good initial data in treating patients. However, several problems emerged with using beta emitters as therapies due to their long circulating half-lives, toxicity to healthy tissue and single-stranded DNA breaks, which increases the probability of creating cancerous cells.
Alpha emitters, and Actinium-225 in particular, are increasingly preferred due to their ability to cause double-stranded DNA breaks in cancer tissue, better selectivity to tumors and shorter half-life. Alpha emitters only extend their effect to a few adjacent cells, reducing risk of collateral damage to healthy tissue near the tumor. Additionally, for healthcare professionals handling and administration of alpha-based radiopharmaceuticals is easier than beta-emitters as there’s no requirement for lead vests and short 5–10 minute infusion time
How is Abdera solving this problem?
Abdera’s Radio Optimized Vector Engineering (ROVEr™) platform is a proprietary and modular platform that is optimized to selectively deliver different types of radioisotopes to unique cancer targets. The company uses its platform to enable the rapid development of a broad range of safe and efficacious therapies that selectively destroy tumour cells while sparing healthy cells, thereby providing patients with potentially transformative new cancer treatments.
Abdera has several significant advantages including:
· A tuneable and modular antibody platform with heavy-chain-only antibodies, which is ideally the optimal size to achieve target specificity, tumour penetration and accumulation of the radioisotope while avoiding significant side effects such as high renal uptake
· Partnerships with leading partners, including Abcellera, to create and design novel antibodies for the platform
· Key relationships with many of the critical radioisotope suppliers
· Combination of clinically validated and unique oncology targets in several different types of cancer
· An experienced management team and board who have deep expertise and demonstrated track records in biologics, oncology radiochemistry and have built and scaled companies before
Canada’s continuation of developing and scaling world-class companies
Amplitude is extremely bullish on the exciting innovation coming out of the Canadian ecosystem to build globally competitive life sciences companies that can massively impact human health and compete on a global stage.
Abdera is another example of a world-class company with global ambitions and access to great local resources which have helped get the company to where it is today. With an exceptional team, a proprietary platform that can generate novel radiopharmaceuticals, partnerships with world leading companies, experienced investors and continued interest in the radio-pharmaceutical space, Abdera has positioned itself as a leader in the space for years to come
We are thrilled we get to help scale this company from its early beginnings.
We look forward to bringing radiopharmaceuticals to the market to help change patients’ lives.
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About Amplitude Ventures
Amplitude Ventures deploys a growth model that has successfully been used to build Canadian companies with world-class management teams and scale companies to breakout potential. Amplitude, with offices in Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver, has ~$500M in AUM and applies a proven, evidence-based approach to investing in leading Canadian and global precision medicine companies.
About Abdera Therapeutics
Abdera Therapeutics is a biopharmaceutical company leveraging antibody engineering to design and develop new precision radiopharmaceuticals for cancer. Abdera’s Radio Optimized Vector Engineering (ROVErTM) platform enables the company to engineer potential best-in-class therapies for both clinically validated and novel targets that deliver potent radioisotopes capable of emitting alpha or beta particles to selectively destroy cancer cells. Abdera’s lead program targets DLL3 for the treatment of small cell lung cancer and other solid tumors. To learn more, please visit www.abderatx.com and follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter.
