Medicenna presents preclinical IL-13 Superkine therapies data at AACR meeting

Medicenna Therapeutics announced that new preclinical data characterizing the Interleukin 13 Superkines, MDNA132 and MDNA213, and a series of next generation IL-13 Superkine therapies, were presented at the 2023 Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research, AACR, which is taking place at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Florida from April 14 – 19, 2023. "Our IL-13 Superkines have been engineered to target the IL-13 decoy receptor, IL-13Ralpha2, which is overexpressed in several solid tumors but minimally expressed in normal tissues, making it an attractive target for immunotherapies," said Fahar Merchant, Ph.D., President and CEO of Medicenna. "Tumors that express high levels of IL-13Ralpha2 are known to be aggressive, resulting in poor survival outcomes for cancer patients. The data presented at AACR demonstrates the ability of our IL-13 Superkines to preferentially accumulate in the microenvironment of IL-13Ralpha2-expressing tumors, enabling development of first-in-class precision immunotherapies that can selectively deliver a variety of therapeutic payloads. These IL-13 Superkine fusions are designed to address unmet needs for cancer patients with tumors that do not respond to blockbuster immunotherapies." The AACR poster includes data demonstrating that both MDNA132 and MDNA213 exhibit highly selective binding to the IL-13 decoy receptor and, in a murine model, selectively accumulate in the tumor microenvironment for several days.