Ankyra Therapeutics Announces Cooperative Research and Development Agreement with the National Cancer Institute

BOSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Ankyra Therapeutics is pleased to announce that it has established a formal Cooperative Research and Development Agreement with the National Cancer Institute (NCI) to pursue basic, translational and clinical research using Ankyra Therapeutics’ emerging anchored immunotherapy pipeline in collaboration with NCI’s Center for Cancer Research (CCR). CCR is located within the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland, and it has made many contributions to cancer therapy. CCR includes intramural investigators focused on understanding cancer biology and developing new therapeutic strategies for the treatment of cancer. The primary NCI investigators include Dr. Jeffrey Schlom, Chief of the Laboratory of Tumor Immunology and Biology in CCR, NCI, and Dr. James Gulley, Chief of the Genitourinary Malignancies Branch, Director of the Medical Oncology Service, and Deputy Director of the CCR, NCI.

“Ankyra is excited to partner with both the basic scientists and clinical investigators at NCI to more rapidly understand how our drugs promote anti-tumor immunity and to quickly get our drugs into clinical trials for patients with cancer,” stated Dr. Howard L. Kaufman, Chief Executive Officer of Ankyra Therapeutics. Dr. Michael Schmidt, Chief Scientific Officer of Ankyra, added “We are especially excited to collaborate with NCI researchers to expand the pre-clinical and clinical development of our lead cytokine therapeutic ANK-101 and look forward to combining our expertise to demonstrate the ability of our anchored immunotherapy platform to enhance the safety and efficacy of powerful immune agonist drugs.”

About Ankyra Therapeutics

Ankyra Therapeutics is a biotechnology company that has developed a highly differentiated technology platform that expands the therapeutic window of cytokine drugs by forming a stable depot in the tumor after local administration leading to prolonged immune activation and potent local and systemic immunity with reduced systemic toxicity.

Ankyra was founded in 2019 and is headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts. For more information, please visit www.ankyratx.com.