Hanmi Pharm to unveil new drug pipelines at AACR 2023
Hanmi Pharmaceutical said it would disclose new drug research projects at the upcoming annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR 2023) in the U.S.
The company’s move will attract much attention from the pharmaceutical industry because Hanmi has stopped working on its existing candidates and is introducing a number of new pipelines.
According to Hanmi Pharmaceutical's recently released business report, the company has discontinued research on two of the drug candidates that it had licensed-in.
The two terminated candidates as of 2021 are HM21001, a stem cell therapy for glioblastoma (GBM), which the company in-licensed from Ajou University in 2016, and bispecific antibody immunotherapy, which it licensed-in from Phanes Therapeutics in 2019.
The total upfront payment, payment amounts, and terms of the agreements were confidential under the agreement of the parties, and both research projects were recognized as an expense.
Hanmi had hoped that the bispecific antibody platform technology from Phanes would create synergy effects with the bispecific antibody platform Pentambody of Beijing Hanmi Pharmaceutical, a subsidiary of Hanmi.
However, it went unsuccessful.
Hanmi Pharmaceutical is participating in the AACR in Orlando, Florida, from April 14-19 to showcase its new drug pipelines in oncology.
The new pipelines that Hanmi Pharmaceutical will unveil at the AACR include LAPSIL-2analog (HM16390), EZH1/2 dual inhibitor (HM97662), SOS1 inhibitor (HM99462), YAP/TAZ-TEAD inhibitor, mRNA anti-cancer vaccine, and PD-L1/4-1BB BsAb (BH3120).
Hanmi Pharmaceutical will present a total of seven research studies in posters.
Among them, the pipeline that has entered the clinical trial stage is EZH1/2 dual inhibitor HM97662, which Hanmi started recruiting patients for a global phase 1 clinical trial for advanced or metastatic solid tumors in February. Clinical sites are in South Korea and Australia.
According to Hanmi, EZH2 is an enzyme that epigenetically methylates lysines on proteins called histones, and EZH2 mutations or dysfunction of various proteins that control overexpressed EZH2 cause a variety of malignancies.
HM97662 has been selected as a Korea Drug Development Fund (KDDF) project, and this year, Hanmi plans to expand the target indication of HM97662 to T-cell lymphoma, a type of blood cancer.
On April 17, Hanmi is to disclose the results of its preclinical candidate BH3120. BH3120 is an immunotherapy candidate with Beijing Hanmi Pharmaceutical's Pentambody. Beijing Hanmi Pharmaceutical and Hanmi plan to submit a phase 1 investigational new drug application to the U.S. FDA within this month.
"Hanmi's presentation at this year's AACR can be described by the keywords of innovation, expansion, and new modalities," said a Hanmi official. "We will continue to discover new innovative programs while further advancing our existing R&D projects."