Mercury Pharmaceuticals

Our multiple antibody discovery engines significantly expanded our target repertoire and enable us to directly, rapidly and efficiently produce new mAb candidates. We have successfully integrated unique and proprietary rabbit-based antibody discovery platform that can generate and develop high quality, functional mAbs targeting traditional proteins and receptors as well as a wide variety of more challenging targets.

Our human antibody discovery engine acquired from Aesica Pharmaceuticals in 2012, led to the clinical development of our fully human IgG1 monoclonal antibody product candidate targeting Sialyl Lewisa (sLea), a carbohydrate moiety that is present in over 90% of pancreatic and a large percentage of gastrointestinal cancers.

In the past decades, monoclonal antibodies, or mAbs, have transformed from scientific tools to powerful human therapeutics. As one of the fastest growing classes of drugs, to date, more than 40 mAbs have been approved to treat a variety of diseases including cancer, inflammation, autoimmune diseases and others. In addition, identified antigen binding domains are also fundamental elements for the construction of novel therapeutic formats and formulations, such as CAR-T cells, bispecific therapeutics and targeted nanoparticles.

Following the success of immune checkpoint blocking antibodies targeting CTLA-4, PD-1 or PD-L1 in cancer treatment, bispecific antibody formats represent the next generation of emerging immunotherapies with the potential to further improve clinical efficacy. In addition to bispecific T cell engager formats, which redirect T-cell cytotoxicity to malignant cells, bispecific antibodies can be formatted as tumor-targeted immunomodulators and dual immunomodulators. Tumor-targeted immunomodulators direct potent immune costimulation to the tumor-infiltrating immune cells, whereas dual immunomodulators simultaneously address two immunomodulating targets, resulting in blockade of inhibitory targets, depletion of suppressive cells or activation of immune effector cells.

Mercury Pharmaceuticals has developed and integrated multiple complementary antibody and antibody-mimetic protein technologies into our overall portfolio of treatment approaches.