More than 327,520 Americans are living with leukemia and each year more than 200,000 new cases are diagnosed. In 2016, an estimated 67,870 will die from these blood cancers demonstrating the failure of current treatments. In addition, current treatments often fail to specifically target leukemia cells and cause major collateral damage to normal tissue. This leads to patients suffering severe side effects including increased vulnerability to life-threatening infections.

Worldwide, the leukemia therapeutics market was valued at $6.3 billion in 2010 and is expected to reach $11.3 billion by 2020 at a CAGR of 3.84% between 2015 and 2020.

Leukemia Therapeutics aims to disrupt the leukemia drug market by introducing targeted antibody therapeutics that not only improve survival but also quality of life.

The targets for therapeutic antibodies are discovered on the surface of leukemia by application of a validated proprietary platform. The therapeutic efficacy of engaging these targets with antibodies is tested in vivo using xenograft mouse models. In subsequent stages of development, humanized versions of the antibodies proven effective in xenograft models are generated, then validated in phase I and phase II clinical trials. Validated humanized antibodies are licensed through leverage of the open innovation business model recently adopted by the pharmaceutical industry.

 

Currently, Leukemia Therapeutics has 5 lead therapeutic antibodies in development. Three of these represent novel treatments for adult T cell leukemia and two target hairy cell leukemia. Novel targets for the treatment of acute myeloid leukemia are in the discovery phase of the product pipeline.