NEW YORK – Ablaze Pharmaceuticals on Friday said it plans to license and develop a glypican-3 (GPC3)-targeted radiotherapy for liver cancer under an existing licensing agreement with RayzeBio.
Once the licensing process is complete, Shanghai-based Ablaze will proceed with clinical development and commercialization of the peptide in the greater China region.
GPC3 is a target that is specific to liver cancer and absent from normal tissue and other pathological liver tissue. In preclinical studies, the radiotherapy candidate showed potent and selective GPC3 binding, rapid cellular internalization, tumor-specific uptake, and anti-tumor efficacy.
About 410,000 new cases of liver cancer and 390,000 deaths were recorded in China in 2020, accounting for about half of cases and deaths globally. Liver cancer is the third most common cause of cancer death globally.
RayzeBio recently announced that it was nominating a GPC3-targeted peptide drug candidate discovered through a research partnership with PeptiDream and would be advancing it into investigational new drug application-enabling studies as a targeted radiopharmaceutical therapy.