The company’s business is focused on the discovery and development of novel lead structures based on cyanobacterial Natural Products (NP). Using its proprietary strain collection with more than 1.100 NP producer strains and its NP libraries with more than 5,000 novel compounds, Cyano Biotech identifies novel leads, optimizes their pharmacological properties by proprietary techniques and generates recombinant microbial producer strains delivering high yields of target compounds. Beside its own drug discovery program, Cyano Biotech collaborates with international pharmaceutical and biotech companies. CTB NP

The company’s drug discovery programs are dedicated to three indications:

indications

Why do we focus on these indications? Cyanobacteria produce highly potent toxins in order to be effective in an aquatic environment where compounds get diluted fast. They have to fight viruses, bacteria, fungi, plankton and found numerous strategies to win. Due to their habitat they handle easily UV radiation, oxidative stress and dehydration. All mostly mediated by bioactive natural products.

Our current focus lies on the development & production of novel payloads for antibody-drug conjugates. We have developed a proprietary platform technology that allows for:

  • Structural modifications / optimizations of nonribosomal peptides from cyanobacteria (2/3 of all NP from cyanobacteria; incl. potent cytotoxins)
  • Introduction of one or more anchor groups comprising conjugation chemistry (incl. click chemistry) at different position of the toxin molecule allowing for
    • Efficient conjugation of targeting moieties (e.g. MABs of ADCs)
    • Efficient coupling of labels (e.g. fluorescence dyes for diagnosis)
    • Additional structural optimizations (e.g. optimized PK/PD properties)
  • Industrial production of structurally/functionally optimized compounds in large scales
By using our platform technology we have recently produced modified/optimized microcystins with anchor groups comprising different kinds of click chemistry for their efficient coupling to linkers of MABs towards novel, potent and selective antibody-drug conjugates.


indications



Proprietary platform for clickable payload production
ADC



Microcystin-based payloads with clickable anchor groups
SAR