Jul 3 2014
BIND Therapeutics, Inc., a clinical-stage nanomedicine platform company developing targeted and programmable therapeutics called AccurinsTM, announced today the completion of its collaborative research program with Amgen Inc. originally entered into in January 2013. Amgen and BIND have notified each other that they will not be exercising their options to develop an Accurin incorporating the Amgen therapeutic payload.
“The goal of this research collaboration was to optimize a specific therapeutic payload from Amgen. Despite achieving the objective of high tumor concentrations, the results were not sufficiently compelling to proceed forward and both collaborators have agreed that the program will not be continued,” said Scott Minick, Chief Executive Officer of BIND Therapeutics. “We remain focused on the continued development of our Accurin platform, including our proprietary drug candidate, BIND-014, and our collaborations with AstraZeneca and Pfizer, as well as our recently announced research collaboration with Roche. Furthermore, consistent with our previous guidance, we continue to expect that our cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments, and research development funding that we expect to receive under our existing collaborations, excluding any potential milestone payments, will fund our operating expenses and capital expenditure requirements through at least mid-2015.”
BIND entered into the 12 month collaboration agreement with Amgen in January 2013, with the goal of developing a nanomedicine for treating solid cancer tumors based on BIND’s platform for targeted and programmable nanomedicines and Amgen’s undisclosed proprietary cancer compound. Under the agreement, Amgen had an option to select a novel Accurin candidate for further development, and if Amgen failed to exercise its option, then BIND had the right to exercise an exclusive option to obtain a license from Amgen to develop, manufacture and commercialize Accurins containing the Amgen therapeutic payload. In December 2013, the option period was extended by six months to July 2014 to allow for completion of the research plan.
About BIND Therapeutics
BIND Therapeutics is a clinical-stage nanomedicine platform company developing Accurins, its novel targeted therapeutics. BIND intends to leverage its Medicinal Nanoengineering® platform to develop a pipeline of Accurins, initially in oncology, as well as Accurins in collaboration with biopharmaceutical companies. BIND’s lead drug candidate, BIND-014, is an Accurin that targets PSMA and contains docetaxel, a clinically-validated and widely used cancer chemotherapy drug. BIND-014 is currently in Phase 2 clinical trials for non-small cell lung cancer and metastatic castrate-resistant prostate cancer. BIND has announced collaborations with Amgen Inc., Pfizer Inc., AstraZeneca and Roche to develop Accurins based on therapeutic payloads from their product pipelines. BIND’s platform originated from the pioneering nanotechnology research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Brigham and Women’s Hospital/Harvard Medical School of BIND’s scientific founders and directors Dr. Robert Langer and Dr. Omid Farokhzad. For more information, please visit the company's web site at www.bindtherapeutics.com.