AptaBio, a biopharmaceutical developer of anticancer and diabetic complications treatments, said Thursday that the company has won a patent for Apta-16, its therapeutic agent for blood cancer.

The company said that Apta-16 is a drug that treats hematologic malignance, which was developed on the basis of its original technology, Apta-DC.

AptaBio completed licensing out the technology to Samjin Pharm in 2016 when the company at the early stage of its development. The two partners co-developed the patent and registered themselves as its joint patentees.

Apta-16 completed preclinical trials in 2019, and the company is speeding up its preparations to enter phase 1 and 2 clinical trials this year.

Although many pharmaceutical companies in the world are struggling hard to develop medicines to treat blood cancer, it is still regarded as one of the most intractable diseases, which is hard to cure a high recurrence rate.

Medical professionals are also finding it hard to treat the disease with the existing drugs as cancer develops resistance to them rapidly. The cancer market has long anticipated the appearance of a treatment that supplements these problems.

AptaBio's Apta-DC is the world’s first aptamer-drug conjugate, and has shown excellent effects in treating blood cancer patients, the company said. Apta-16 has demonstrated potential as a new blood cancer medicine with therapeutic effects when primary treatments show poor results or resistance appears to such therapies.

Since its foundation in 2009, AptaBio has been acquiring patents for its researches in various countries, including the U.S., Europe, and Japan, to prevent other companies from entering the same market with similar technology to it.

Apta-DC technology targets and binds to nucleolin protein, which is present on the surface of cancer cells and affects cancer cell proliferation. The combined aptamer-drug conjugate then infiltrates into the cancer cells and suspends their proliferation and growth. The drug works as a dual anticancer therapy to induce apoptosis.

The mechanism of Apta-DC has proven its potential as the treatment of intractable cancer by reducing side effects and providing anticancer effects.

AptaBio is holding three pipeline technologies in blood, pancreatic, and liver cancer based on its Apta-DC, and plans to expand other pipelines, too, it said.

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