MELBOURNE Australia, 21 March, 2017: AdAlta Limited (ASX: 1AD), the biotechnology company advancing its lead i-body candidate towards clinical development today announced the continuation of its collaboration with The Alfred hospital in Melbourne, Australia, and the clinical research team led by Dr Glen Westall, an expert in lung fibrosis and Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis (IPF).
Fibrosis accounts for 45 per cent of all diseases globally in the developed world and represents a large unmet medical need.
The expanded collaboration between AdAlta and The Alfred to further validate AD-114’s role in the treatment of IPF will run for an additional six months and will be funded by an Innovation Connection grant from the Australian Federal Government as well as AdAlta’s research and development, and clinical budget.
AdAlta Chief Executive Officer Sam Cobb said “Our multiple collaborations and strategic alliances across commercial, clinical and manufacturing areas with world-leading partners, such as the team at The Alfred, further enhance the potential for the success of our new treatments for fibrosis.”
Respiratory Physician at The Alfred hospital, Dr Glen Westall and his team are international leaders in the field of lung fibrosis with access to human IPF patient tissue for evaluation with AdAlta’s lead candidate AD-114.
Dr Westall, said, “We are excited to continue working with AdAlta to further understand this complex fibrotic disease and how the Company’s novel i-body may play a role in the treatment of IPF, for which there is currently no cure.”
Dr Westall recently spoke at AdAlta’s inaugural fibrosis investor briefing, where he provided an overview of IPF and currently available treatments. The full-length presentation is available on AdAlta’s website as well as a video highlight of the day.
Notes to Editors
About AdAlta
AdAlta Limited is an Australian based drug development company headquartered in Melbourne. The Company is focused on using its proprietary technology platform to generate i-bodies, a new class of protein therapeutics, with applications as therapeutic drugs to treat disease.
The i-body is a human analogue of the antigen binding domain of the shark antibody, which combines the advantages of monoclonal antibodies (high target specificity and affinity) with the beneficial stability features of small molecules. In addition to stability, the i-body has a long binding loop that is a feature of shark antibodies not present in either human or next generation antibodies. This feature enables the i-body to recognise and bind to a diverse range of different therapeutically-relevant drug targets, including those that are difficult/intractable to access by current antibody therapies. These include clinically important targets such as G-protein coupled receptors (GPCRs) and ion channels.
AdAlta is developing its lead i-body candidate, AD-114, for the treatment of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) and other human fibrotic diseases, for which current therapies are sub-optimal and there is a high-unmet medical need.
The Company also plans to continue further drug discovery and development directed towards other drug targets and diseases with its i-body technology platform.
Further information can be found at: www.adalta.com.au.
For more information, please contact:
AdAlta Limited
Sam Cobb, CEO
Tel: +61 (0)3 9479 5159
E: s.cobb@adalta.com.au
Media (Australia)
Andrew Geddes
Tel: +61 (0)408 677 734
E: adalta@instinctif.com
Media (International)
Sue Charles / Daniel Gooch
Tel: +44 (0)20 7866 7905
E: adalta@instinctif.com