National Innovation Award, held by the Research Center for Biotechnology and Medicine Policy (RBMP) is considered as the most honorable award in the fields of biotechnology. This year, CHO Pharma’s “CHO-A04 Anti-glycan Antibody for Cancer” is recognized for its innovative value and is awarded with the 16th National Innovation Award in the Pharmaceutical Category.

CHO Pharma, Inc., founded in 2013, is a pioneer in glycotechnology. The research team is assembled by nearly twenty of glycoscience experts, with a mission to integrate and commercialize the technologies exclusively licensed from Academia Sinca. Now CHO Pharma has successfully created a unique carbohydrate-based product portfolio, one of the pipeline products, the award-winning CHO-A04, is a humanized therapeutic antibody specifically targeting a special glycosphingolipid named stage-specific embryonic antigen-4 (SSEA-4). To date, the overexpression of SSEA-4 has been found in 16 different cancers, such as triple negative breast cancer and pancreatic cancer etc., cancer cells that are resistant to chemotherapy and cancer stem cells from different tumor origins also highly expressed the SSEA-4. Significantly, the expression of SSEA-4 in normal tissue is limited, indicating that SSEA-4 suitable potential target for cancer therapy. CHO-A04 binds to SSEA-4 with a strong affinity and specificity, and kills SSEA-4 expressing cancer cells via antibody-dependent cellular cytotoxicity (ADCC), complement-dependent cytotoxicity (CDC) and antibody-dependent cellular phagocytosis (ADCP). In addition to the immune mediated cytotoxicity, CHO-A04 and first line anticancer chemotherapies showed a synergistic effect, which could further suppress tumor growth in vivo.

We look forward to seeing that CHO-A04, the world's first therapeutic antibody targeting SSEA-4, would provide a better treatment for cancer patients, meet the urgent medical needs and, in turn, open up a new blue ocean to compete for the $100 billion anticancer drug market.