Point, Athebio announce partnership to develop DARPin-targeted radioligands

POINT Biopharma Global and Athebio announced a collaboration and license agreement to develop and commercialize DARPin-targeted radioligands. The collaboration gives POINT exclusive access to Athebio’s intellectual property and capabilities in DARPin development in the radioligand therapy field. Together, the parties will collaborate in discovery, candidate selection and preclinical development of Athebody DARPins for use as Radio-DARPin drug entities. POINT will be solely responsible for the clinical development and commercialization of Radio-DARPins translated from the discovery collaboration. “The holy grail of radioligand development is the ability to engineer ligands that can precisely deliver radiation and also have physical properties that are resistant to radiolytic damage, enabling them to be manufactured at scale,” said Joe McCann, Ph.D., Chief Executive Officer of POINT Biopharma. “DARPins represent a potential goldilocks opportunity in this regard, and could unlock new cell surface targets creating a new horizon for the development of novel targeted radioligand therapies. I am excited by this collaboration with Athebio, experts in DARPin technology, as it further expands our library of tools to engineer next-generation radioligands.”