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  • Our Approach
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    • HMBD-001
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  • About Us
  • Our Approach
  • Discovery Platform
  • Pipeline
    • HMBD-001
    • HMBD-002
    • Covid-19 mAb
  • News
  • Careers

OUR APPROACH

At Hummingbird, we believe that modern approaches to systems biology and data science can overcome the challenges of classical methods of therapeutics discovery, and profoundly improve the way we deliver new transformative medicines.

Target Biology

Our Approach

Using cutting-edge computational biology tools, AI and machine learning algorithms, we build our understanding of the structure and function of proteins involved in disease mechanisms, then identify optimal therapeutic targets, strategies, and epitopes to effectively impact the disease.

How We Apply This

Existing drugs against HER3, a well-known protein implicated in many cancers, do not completely block its activation. Through structure-based analysis, we unravelled the critical interfaces of the HER3 protein that underlie its function. Then, using our platform, we identified an optimal yet elusive epitope that can fully inactivate HER3.


Lead Discovery

Our Approach

Our unique antibody discovery platform enables us to overcome many of the challenges of finding potent therapeutic antibodies and to generate antibodies precisely engineered for efficacy, safety and develop-ability. This includes agonists, antibodies against transmembrane proteins and conserved regions of rapidly mutating viral proteins.

How We Apply This

​Instead of relying on the overlap of immuno-dominant regions with functional interfaces of HER3, which is common in most classical antibody discovery, we specifically directed an immune response to the optimal yet elusive epitope on HER3 that our platform had identified. The resulting antibodies potently blocked HER3 activation to stop tumor cell growth.

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Translational Science

Our Approach

Our translational mindset is grounded in a deep understanding of the mechanisms of disease, the causes of disease resistance and unmet medical need. We use human tissue studies, omics and relevant disease models to test our differentiated hypotheses in our labs and in collaboration with academic and industry partners.

How We Apply This

In some patients and in some tumor types, treatments can fail due to upregulation of HER3 signalling. Through integrative analyses of robust datasets, we have identified those patient populations who may most benefit from HER3 therapy, for example, patients with NRG1-fusions.


Pre-Clinical Development and Manufacturing

Our Approach

Taking a new therapeutic to the clinic is a complex team effort that must overcome the diverse challenges of protein engineering, pharmacology and toxicology, cell line and process development, and the manufacturing of materials for the clinic. We believe the key to doing this successfully is to retain overall control of the key steps to ensure we maintain the highest quality whilst meeting our ambitious timelines.

How We Apply This

Our team of experienced scientists have taken multiple programs through pre-clinical development and manufacturing to deliver data packages and material for clinical trials.


Clinical Development

Our Approach

We believe that clinical trials in defined patient populations, leveraging innovative clinical methodologies and scientific-driven hypotheses, can efficiently deliver clinical proof of concept for our programs.

How We Apply This

We have assembled a team of industry veterans in medical, clinical and regulatory functions, complemented by collaborations with multiple clinical KOLs at the world’s leading clinical research centres and international partnerships, to operationalize our clinical strategies.

JLABS Texas Medical Center
2450 Holcombe Blvd Suite J Houston, TX 77021

Registered Company No:
201505192N
Temasek Lifescience Laboratories
1 Research Link
Singapore 117604
For general enquiries, please contact contact@hummingbirdbio.com

For career enquiries, please contact careers@hummingbirdbio.com
JLABS Texas Medical Center
2450 Holcombe Blvd Suite J
Houston, TX 77021
Temasek Lifescience Laboratories
1 Research Link
Singapore 117604
Registered Company No: 201505192N
For general enquiries, please contact contact@hummingbirdbio.com
For career enquiries, please contact careers@hummingbirdbio.com
PRIVACY POLICY | © 2020 Hummingbird Bioscience

HER3 ANTIBODY

HER3 is part of EGFR family of tyrosine kinase receptors which are key components of the MAPK and PI3K signaling pathways. It frequently co-expresses or forms heterodimers with other members of the family such as EGFR or HER2, which potently activates the PI3K pathway. This usually leads to tumor proliferation. Several antibody therapies targeting HER3 have failed in clinical tests due to their inability to fully shut down HER3 signaling.

This is largely due to their inability to fully prevent HER3 dimerization and activation. By predicting and identifying the optimal epitope for antibody binding to prevent HER3 dimerization, Hummingbird has successfully developed an antibody against this elusive epitope. The Hummingbird anti-HER3 antibody’s novel mechanism of action uniquely blocks all HER3 dimerization and activation, resulting in potent tumor growth inhibition and the potential prevention of drug resistance.

References:https://mct.aacrjournals.org/content/19/2/490

Competition

Antibodies bind immunodominant but non-critical regions of HER3, leading to sub-optimal effect.

Hummingbird

Antibody blocks critical dimerization interface, leading to effective inhibition of HER3 function.

Ligand Binding Region

Dimerization Interface

  • About Us
  • Our Approach
  • Discovery Platform
  • Pipeline
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    • HMBD-001
    • HMBD-002
    • Covid-19 mAb
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