Navidea Biopharmaceuticals Announces Details of Presentation at Upcoming Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer Annual Meeting
Navidea Biopharmaceuticals, Inc. (NYSE American: NAVB) (“Navidea” or the “Company”), a company focused on the development of precision immunodiagnostic agents and immunotherapeutics, today announced details of the results from the Company’s ongoing preclinical studies evaluating targeted immunotherapy for cancer based on the Manocept platform. The results will be presented at the 37th Annual Meeting of the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (“SITC”) to be held at the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center in person and virtually November 8-12, 2022 in Boston, MA. These details were embargoed by SITC until the week of the meeting.
The abstract, “Synthetic CD206 Targeted Constructs Carrying Paclitaxel or Novel Bisphosphonate Payloads Alter Macrophages Towards Pro-inflammatory Phenotypes; The Paclitaxel Construct Improves the Efficacy of anti-CTLA4 in CT26 Tumors” (Abstract #1161), will be presented as a poster on November 10, 9 am to 9 pm in the conference center’s poster hall.
In this study, results demonstrate that Navidea’s macrophage-targeting Manocept platform technology, consisting of mannosylated amine dextrans (“MAD”) and carrying the therapeutic payloads paclitaxel or a novel bisphosponate, could drive the phenotype of macrophages in vitro towards a proinflammatory type (more CD80 and CD86 expression, less CD206 and CD163 expression). This is important because in tumors there exist tumor-associated macrophages (“TAMs”) that are typically of the wound healing, anti-inflammatory type, and these play a key role in paradoxically shielding the tumors from the body’s immune response. Driving the TAM phenotype more towards a proinflammatory state should enable both an immune response against the tumors as well as increase the efficacy of other therapies that can work alongside the body’s immune system against the tumors.
In addition to the in vitro work using both the paclitaxel and bisphosphonate carrying constructs, in vivo studies using the MAD-paclitaxel construct in a mouse tumor model demonstrated that this construct increased the efficacy of an approved checkpoint inhibitor therapy, anti-CTLA4, reducing tumor growth by 76% compared to a saline control. Delivery of paclitaxel and bisphosphonates by this method also reduces off-target exposure and should limit toxicity.