Cidara Therapeutics, WuXi XDC expand collaboration for CD73 program

Cidara Therapeutics announced an expansion of their existing collaboration under which WuXi XDC will provide investigational new drug-enabling chemistry, manufacturing and controls development services for Cidara’s CD73 oncology DFC program. Cidara’s lead oncology candidate, renamed CD421, targets CD73 in the adenosine pathway, which contributes to immune evasion in solid cancers by flooding the tumor microenvironment with adenosine, a potent immune cell suppressor. CD73 is highly expressed on a variety of tumor and stromal cells as well as immunosuppressive cell populations, such as regulatory T cells and myeloid-derived suppressor cells. Cidara’s lead CD73 DFC is designed to address the potency, efficacy, pharmacokinetic and safety limitations of small molecule and monoclonal antibody candidates targeting CD73. Cloudbreak DFCs stably couple highly potent small molecules or peptides to a proprietary variant of a human antibody fragment. As a result, DFCs are long-acting, and are designed to directly inhibit specific disease targets. DFCs can be tuned to engage the immune system or to be immune silent, expanding the breadth of indications that can be targeted. Immune active DFCs can attract an immune response against cancer cells to maximize disease eradicating activity, while immune silent DFCs allow for expansion into cancer indications where immune system engagement could result in host toxicity. Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed.