BIND Therapeutics, Inc., a clinical-stage nanomedicine platform company developing targeted and programmable proprietary therapeutics called Accurins, reports it has completed 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.

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.

“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.

BIND’s lead drug candidate, BIND-014, is an Accurin that targets the prostate-specific membrane antigen and contains docetaxel, a cancer chemotherapy drug. BIND-014 is currently in Phase II 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 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 .

Source: BIND Therapeutics