LabGenomics Anticipates Next-Generation Immuno-Oncology Platform... Competitive Edge Over Global Pharmaceutical Companies

[Asia Economy Reporter Hyunseok Yoo] LabGenomics, a molecular diagnostics specialist company, announced on the 7th that it has verified high safety and anticancer efficacy in animal experiments related to the CD47-targeting anticancer drug candidate ‘LGP-S01’.

‘LGP-S01’ is a ferritin-based anticancer drug targeting the CD47 protein. CD47 is known as a signal protein that is mainly overexpressed in cancer cells and blocks phagocytosis by macrophages that eat cancer cells. CD47 inhibitory anticancer therapy has high potential as a next-generation immuno-oncology drug, and recognizing this, major overseas pharmaceutical companies have recently been aggressively adopting CD47-targeting drugs.

Gilead, leading the clinical development of CD47 inhibitors, acquired the CD47 antibody company Forty Seven for $4.9 billion. Abbvie also licensed a CD47 monoclonal antibody from I-Mab for $1.94 billion. In August, Pfizer acquired the CD47-targeting fusion protein company Trillium Therapeutics for $2.26 billion.

Since CD47 is also expressed on normal cells including red blood cells (RBCs), antibody-based CD47 inhibitors, including those by Gilead, have reported serious side effects such as malignant anemia caused by red blood cell reduction. This limits the ability to increase therapeutic dosage. To overcome this, Trillium, recently acquired by Pfizer, uses a fusion protein approach instead of antibodies. Trillium’s strategy can reduce side effects but may not show therapeutic efficacy at low concentrations and may require high doses depending on the situation.

LabGenomics’ ‘LGP-S01’ showed no red blood cell reduction even at doses five times higher than those used by other developers in recent animal experiments. Compared to CD47 antibody therapies, LGP-S01 demonstrated significantly increased anticancer efficacy. LGP-S01 introduced 24 CD47-binding proteins SIRPα (single regulatory protein alpha) on the ferritin surface, resulting in 12 times more binding sites than antibodies, while lacking the Fc region that can cause side effects, which made these results possible.

Taeok Kim, Vice President of the New Drug Business Division at LabGenomics, explained, “When developing CD47-targeting drugs, reducing side effects such as malignant anemia while maintaining high efficacy is a critical success factor and a point of differentiation. The safety of LGP-S01 showed very positive results even compared to global big pharma data, and it secured a clear efficacy difference over CD47 antibodies in anticancer effects.”

LabGenomics launched its New Drug Business Division in August, led by Vice President Taeok Kim. As its first pipeline, it licensed the ferritin nanocage-based immuno-oncology drug ‘LGP-S01’ from ShiftBio. A company official stated that various validations and strategic plans are currently underway to enter the preclinical stage of ‘LGP-S01’, with the goal of entering clinical trials in the second half of next year.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.