HUMMINGBIRD BIOSCIENCE PRESENTS PRE-CLINICAL DATA ON ITS NEXT-GENERATION BCMA-TACI DUAL-SPECIFIC T CELL ENGAGER AT 2021 AACR ANNUAL MEETING

HUMMINGBIRD BIOSCIENCE PRESENTS PRE-CLINICAL DATA ON ITS NEXT-GENERATION BCMA-TACI DUAL-SPECIFIC T CELL ENGAGER AT 
2021 AACR ANNUAL MEETING

Singapore, April 10, 2021 – Hummingbird Bioscience, an innovative clinical-stage biotech company focused on developing precision therapies against hard-to-drug targets to improve treatment outcomes, today announced that the company will be presenting pre-clinical data on its BCMA-TACI dual-specific T cell engager, HMBD-009, at the 2021 American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Annual Meeting taking place 9-14 April. 

HMBD-009 is Hummingbird’s next-generation T cell program that uniquely targets both B cell maturation antigen (BCMA) and Transmembrane activator and CAML Interactor (TACI), proteins commonly overexpressed in multiple myeloma, the second most common hematologic malignancy and a leading cause of cancer deaths in the US^[1]. 

Developed with Hummingbird’s Rational Antibody Discovery platform, HMBD-009 is engineered to bind strongly and specifically to an optimal yet elusive epitope shared by BCMA and TACI. Pre-clinical studies demonstrate that HMBD-009 binding can specifically trigger antibody-mediated anti-tumor responses to cells expressing BCMA and/or TACI proteins. In addition, when used in a T cell engager format (anti-CD3) the dual-specific engager can direct an immune response to kill those cancer cells expressing BCMA and TACI proteins without affecting other cells. 

“Current immunotherapies that target BCMA in multiple myeloma patients can fail if BCMA expression is lost from the cancer cells. Importantly, these cells also express other cancer associated proteins such as TACI,” said Dr Jerome Boyd-Kirkup, Chief Scientific Officer and co-founder of Hummingbird. “Dual targeting of BCMA and TACI is an innovative strategy to overcome the issue of resistance caused by BCMA antigen loss, and our data suggests that this will improve therapeutic outcomes. We are excited to continue the development of this important new therapy for patients with multiple myeloma.” 

The abstract and presentation details at AACR are as follows:

The abstract can be found on AACR’s website.