Harbour BioMed inks licensing deal with Cullinan

China and USA-based Harbour BioMed (HKEX: 02142) saw its shares rise more than 7% to HK$3.17, after it announced an exclusive license agreement with US firm Cullinan Oncology (Nasdaq: CGEM) for the development and commercial rights on HBM7008 (CLN-418) in the USA.

CLN-418/HBM7008 is a B7H4 x 4-1BB bispecific immune activator developed from next-gen heavy chain only antibody (HCAb)-based multi-specific antibody discovery platform HBICE, currently in a Phase I clinical study being conducted at US and Australian sites in patients with advanced solid tumors.

B7H4 is an attractive tumor associated antigen (TAA) highly expressed on multiple tumor types, including triple negative breast cancer, ovarian cancer, and lung cancer, while expression on normal tissue is low. A coinhibitory immune checkpoint with PD-L1 in the B7 family, B7H4 has minimal overlap with PD-L1 expression. Targeting B7H4 has the potential to address tumor types for which PD-L1-based immunotherapies have exhibited limited efficacy.