Molecular Partners to Present Additional Preclinical Data Supporting the Company’s Radio DARPin Therapy Platform at AACR

ZURICH-SCHLIEREN, Switzerland and CONCORD, Mass., April 14, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Molecular Partners AG (SIX: MOLN; NASDAQ: MOLN), a clinical-stage biotech company developing a new class of custom-built protein drugs known as DARPin therapeutics, today announced that further preclinical data supporting the company’s Radio DARPin Therapy Platform will be shared at the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting held April 14-19 in Orlando, Florida.

Poster: “DARPins as powerful targeting agents for radioligand therapeutics”
Number: 5037
Timing: April 18, 2023, 1:30pm – 5:00pm
Presenter: Daniel Steiner, Ph.D., Senior Vice President of Research

Molecular Partners’ proprietary Radio DARPin Therapy (RDT) platform represents a unique and innovative delivery system designed to deliver radioactive payloads to solid tumors without accumulating in other tissues. Historically, small protein-based delivery vectors have accumulated in the kidney, presenting a tolerability risk.

Data within the presentation demonstrate that both the affinity and small size of DARPins can have an impact on tumor penetration. In addition to this, the data highlights that surface engineering of the DARPin backbone is a promising strategy to strongly reduce the kidney accumulation of DARPins, without affecting tumor uptake. The data also show that the addition of other orthogonal strategies results in a further reduction of kidney accumulation.

“We continue to deepen the data set supporting the distinctive target product profile of RDTs, addressing historic challenges for protein-based radionuclide vectors through the particular attributes of DARPins as an engineered protein drug class,” said Daniel Steiner, Ph.D., Senior Vice President of Research at Molecular Partners. “By improving on both the potential efficacy and safety of radiotherapy, we see a true potential for the RDT platform to expand the treatable universe, beyond the traditional ligand targets and into a broad range of tumor targets.”

Molecular Partners is developing candidates both in-house as well as in collaboration with Novartis, a global leader in radioligand therapies. Molecular Partners’ first disclosed target for its in-house RDT programs is Delta-like ligand 3 (DLL3), a protein which has low expression in healthy tissues but significantly increased expression in certain tumor types.

Previously reported data supporting the RDT platform presented at TAT-12 can be found here, while the latest results will be shared via a poster at AACR 2023 on April 18. The poster will be made available on the Molecular Partners website.