GE Healthcare and Affibody Collaborate to Develop PET Imaging Tracers

By HospiMedica International staff writers

[26 Sep 2019]
Image: The collaboration between GE Healthcare and Affibody is intended to enhance the treatment of cancer patients worldwide (Photo courtesy of Shutterstock).
GE Healthcare (Chicago, IL, USA) and Affibody AB (Solna, Sweden) have entered into a strategic collaboration to develop and commercialize Affibody-based PET imaging tracers, with initial focus on HER2 and PD-L1.

Affibody is a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company focused on developing innovative bi- and multi-specific next generation biopharmaceuticals based on its unique proprietary technology platforms: Affibody molecules and Albumod. Affibody operates a focused experimental medicine model and currently has three clinical stage programs. The first two are therapeutic programs that target psoriasis, and B-cell driven autoimmune diseases, respectively. The third program is a diagnostic imaging program that is directed primarily towards metastatic breast cancer.

The Affibody technology is uniquely suited for the development of PET imaging tracers and ABY-025, a HER2-detecting Affibody-based PET imaging tracer, is currently in clinical development. ABY-025 provides a novel non-invasive and cost-effective approach to diagnose global HER2-expression in metastatic breast cancer patients using PET imaging. Affibody is currently working together with academic institutions to explore the clinical utility of ABY-025 further. The PD-L1 binding Affibody molecule is being developed as a diagnostic tool to improve selection and monitoring of patients with immuno-oncology treatments. The collaboration with GE Healthcare will accelerate studies through to a stage of clinical proof of concept.

“The initiation of a strategic collaboration with GE Healthcare around PET imaging tracers reflects the commitment of Affibody to precision medicine and biomarker guided patient treatment. It also underlines the competitiveness of our technology and the value of the clinical data that has been generated with Affibody-based imaging agents,” said David Bejker, CEO of Affibody. “We believe that our collaboration with GE Healthcare to develop and commercialize these imaging agents will make a significant contribution to enhance the treatment of cancer patients globally.”

“We recognize that PET imaging plays a vital role in the development and use of cancer immunotherapies as it is a non-invasive way to measure patient response before, during and after treatment,” said Sanka Thiru, Head of Molecular Imaging Oncology, in GE Healthcare’s Pharmaceutical Diagnostics business. “We are partnering with companies like Affibody to build a portfolio of molecular imaging agents for oncology, focusing on those disease biomarkers that will help accelerate the development of the next generation of cancer treatments.”