For mAbs, A Small Biotech Recognizes The Value Of Expertise And Track Record

By William B. Jones, Ph.D., Senior Vice President of Pharmaceutical Development, Corvus Pharmaceuticals

William B. Jones, Senior Vice President of Pharmaceutical Development at Corvus Pharmaceuticals, discusses how Lonza’s reputation for quality and its experience with antibodies were the driving forces in his company’s selection of CDMO for its CPI-006 antibody program, which is currently under development as an oncology drug and investigation as a therapeutic for immune disorders and infectious diseases.

Early Focus on Oncology

Corvus Pharmaceuticals is a clinical-stage immunology-focused biopharmaceutical company developing drugs that target the most critical cellular elements of the immune system. We focus on bringing cleverly designed medicines to patients with difficult-to-treat cancers, immune disorders, and infectious diseases.

Corvus was started by a group of people previously involved with Pharmacyclics, including Richard Miller, one of the founders of both Pharmacyclics and IDEC. I joined the company in late 2014, shortly after Series A funding was raised that year. We in-licensed CPI-444 (ciforadenant), a small-molecule adenosine 2A receptor antagonist, that we are developing as a cancer immunotherapy. Our research group created and we are developing CPI-818, a small-molecule ITK inhibitor for treatment of T cell lymphomas and autoimmune disease. We are developing a humanized monoclonal anti CD73 antibody for cancer therapy and for infectious disease. This agonistic antibody activates immune cells, particularly B cells and stimulates antigen specific humoral immunity. We were the first group to identify this novel mechanism of action.