AlbuCORE™ Platform
AlbuCORE™ was developed as a flexible, alternative platform to antibodies where it is advantageous for a multi-valent therapeutic to target multiple disease targets.
AlbuCORE™ builds on the successful therapeutic applications of human serum albumin (HSA) and has the following key features:
- Enhanced tumor localization
- Ability to alter the distances and geometries of the targeting moieties fused to AlbuCORE™ to maximize therapeutic effect
- Compatible with combinations of drug conjugates
- Lack of innate effector function
- Long serum half-life
- Highly manufacturable with good biophysical properties
The AlbuCORE™ platform is a novel and proprietary family of multi-valent scaffolds based on human serum albumin (HSA). Engineered AlbuCORE™ is heterodimeric and presents two amino termini and two carboxyl termini. To achieve this, we evaluated a number of positions where the native HSA amino acid sequence could be split into two polypeptide chains. When the two separate chains are co-expressed, they efficiently and spontaneously associate to reform a native-like HSA structure with four available termini to which antigen-targeting domains can be fused, or other agents chemically conjugated. Splitting the native HSA polypeptide in different locations results in a panel of available AlbuCORE™ constructs where we can significantly alter the resulting target engagement distances and geometries to confer the maximum therapeutic effect.
