Aptamer Sciences said on Friday that it signed a CDMO (contract development and manufacturing organization) agreement with China’s Asymchem for developing an anticancer drug.

The deal involves GMP process development and production of clinical samples of AST-201, an aptamer-drug conjugate (ApDC)-based anticancer drug candidate.

The CDMO deal helped Atamer Sciences secure a mass production of AST-201 and a stable supply and accelerate the clinical development of the drug candidate, the company said.

According to Aptamer Sciences, AST-201 is an ApDC-based targeted therapy that internalizes the anticancer drug gemcitabine in the prodrug form within the anticancer target aptamer structure.

It was designed to minimize the systemic side effects of gemcitabine and maximize the target-specific anticancer effect by applying a specific and selective aptamer to the GPC3 protein, a tumor biomarker.

By internalizing gemcitabine in an aptamer, the drug can overcome tumors’ mechanism of resisting anticancer agents, Aptamer Sciences said.

aptamer has a relatively short half-life in the blood, the company said it could minimize the drug’s systemic exposure compared to antibodies. Also, the drug can effectively overcome toxic side effects, a major obstacle in developing an antibody-drug conjugate (ADC), it added.

“It is encouraging that the latest CDMO agreement made the clinical progress of ApDC-based anticancer drug development smooth,” an official at Aptamer Sciences said. “We will closely work with Asymchem to enter the clinical development stage as soon as possible.”