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Astellas and Sutro Biopharma Announce Worldwide Strategic Collaboration to Advance Novel Immunostimulatory Antibody-Drug Conjugates (iADCs)
- iADCs are a next-generation modality for treating cancer and designed to boost anti-cancer activity, offering potential new options for patients who do not
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[{"type":"text","content":"- iADCs are a next-generation modality for treating cancer and designed to boost anti-cancer activity, offering potential new options for patients who do not respond to existing cancer immunotherapies -\n- Sutro will receive an upfront payment of US$90 million to develop iADCs for three biological targets and may be eligible to receive up to an additional US$422.5 million USD in development, regulatory and commercial milestones for each product candidate, plus royalties - \nTOKYO and SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., June 27, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Astellas Pharma Inc. (TSE: 4503), (President and CEO: Kenji Yasukawa, Ph.D., \"Astellas\") and Sutro Biopharma, Inc. (NASDAQ: STRO), (CEO: William J. Newell, JD, \"Sutro\") today announced a worldwide, strategic collaboration and licensing agreement focused on the discovery and development of novel immunostimulatory antibody-drug conjugates (iADCs). The collaboration leverages the unique cancer-fighting potential of iADCs as a novel modality, enabled by Sutro's ability to engineer complex conjugated antibodies, and Astellas' global oncology R&D expertise.\n\n \n \n \n \n \n \n\n \n\"We are delighted to work with Astellas, a premier biopharmaceutical company with substantial expertise in immuno-oncology, on this novel modality,\" said William J. Newell, Sutro's Chief Executive Officer. \"iADCs hold promise well beyond the existing success of ADCs. Sutro's unique conjugation technology enables dual conjugations that site-specifically incorporate a potent cytotoxin that can directly kill tumor cells together with an immunostimulatory component that has the potential to locally prime an immune response to the patient's particular tumor cells. We look forward to collaboratively exploring the potential of this approach to treat cold tumors and bring new drug therapies to patients who do not respond to existing immunotherapies.\"\nNaoki Okamura, Chief Strategy Officer, at Astellas commented, \"Astellas considers Immuno-Oncology as one of the Primary Focuses of its R&D strategy; our goal is to bring effective drugs to patients who do not respond to existing immune checkpoint inhibitors. Sutro is a leading company in the area of iADCs, a new modality, and has its own original iADC technologies. The strategic partnership with Sutro will help us expand our pipeline and widen the choice of cancer immuno...