CAMBRIDGE, England & BOSTON, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Bicycle Therapeutics, a biotechnology company pioneering a new class of therapeutics based on its proprietary bicyclic peptide (Bicycle™) product platform, today announced publication of its paper in the February 15th issue of Cancer Research. The publication demonstrates the potential of Bicycles as a powerful platform technology for molecular imaging and diagnostics. Future products based on this technology may help guide improved patient selection and better assessment of patient responses to treatment with cancer therapeutics.
Bicycle Therapeutics is developing Bicycles as medicines for cancer and, through collaboration, in other therapeutic areas such as respiratory, cardiovascular, hematology and infectious diseases. Bicycles are fully synthetic short peptides constrained to form two loops that stabilize their structural geometry. This constraint is designed to confer high affinity and selectivity, and the relatively large surface area presented by the molecule allows targets to be drugged that have historically been intractable to non-biological approaches. Bicycles also have attractive pharmacokinetic properties with rapid and extensive tissue penetration, renal elimination and a tunable systemic half-life.
The new paper highlights the utility of Bicycles as diagnostic or imaging agents. The research, conducted in collaboration with the Division of Radiopharmaceutical Chemistry, German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), suggests Bicycles could become effective agents for molecular imaging to inform the choice of targeted therapy and to monitor patients’ responses to treatment. Development of peptide-based imaging agents has been slow due to the lack of availability of suitable targeting agents with appropriate drug-like properties. The proprietary Bicycle platform allows for rapid identification of high affinity binders to novel cancer antigens and their subsequent facile optimization to molecules with optimized physicochemical and PK properties. Indeed, this technology may also allow other therapeutic payloads to be delivered effectively, such as radiopharmaceuticals.
“While we are focused on developing Bicycles as a novel class of medicines, we continue to explore their full potential across all therapeutic applications,” said Nick Keen, Ph.D., Chief Scientific Officer of Bicycle Therapeutics. “This research underscores the unique properties of Bicycles, including exquisitely precise tumor targeting, and reinforces our confidence that our Bicycle platform will address patient needs that cannot be met by any existing modality.”
About Bicycle Therapeutics
Bicycle Therapeutics is
developing a unique class of chemically synthesized medicines based on
its proprietary bicyclic peptide (Bicycle™) product platform to
address therapeutic needs unreachable with existing treatment
modalities. Bicycle’s internal focus is in oncology, where the company
is developing targeted cytotoxics (Bicycle Toxin Conjugates™),
targeted innate immune activators and T-cell modulators for cancers of
high unmet medical need. Bicycles’ small size and
highly selective targeting deliver rapid tumor penetration and retention
while clearance rates and routes of elimination can be tuned to minimize
exposure of healthy tissue and bystander toxicities. The company’s lead
program, BT1718, is being evaluated in a Phase I/IIa trial in
collaboration with Cancer Research UK. The company’s unique intellectual
property is based on the work initiated at the MRC Laboratory of
Molecular Biology in Cambridge, U.K., by the scientific founders of the
company, Sir Greg Winter, a winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for
his pioneering work in phage display of peptides and antibodies, and
Professor Christian Heinis. Bicycle has its headquarters in Cambridge,
U.K., with many key functions and members of its leadership team located
in the biotech hub of Boston, Mass. For more information, visit www.bicycletherapeutics.com or
follow us on Twitter at @Bicycle_tx.
