Celldex Gets Seminal Patent For CD27 Agonists - Quick Facts

(RTTNews) - Celldex Therapeutics, Inc. (CLDX), Wednesday announced that the United States Patent and Trademark Office or USPTO has issued US Patent No. 8,481,029 for its product candidate CDX-1127. The candidate is a fully human monoclonal antibody or mAb that targets CD27 and is currently in Phase 1 clinical development for the treatment of solid tumors and hematologic malignancies.

The patent includes 18 claims covering various methods of treating cancer using agonistic anti-human CD27 antibodies and relates, among other things, directly to Celldex's CD27 antibody program and therapeutic uses of Celldex's antibody CDX-1127.

CD27, a signaling molecule expressed on T lymphocytes, can be effectively manipulated with activating antibodies to induce potent anti-tumor responses and, due to the restricted expression and regulation of CD27, may result in less toxicity.

At the 2013 American Association of Cancer Research Annual Meeting, in vitro human data were presented that demonstrated that CDX-1127 elicits potent activation of T cells by inducing their proliferation and release of important immune modulating cytokines.