Kumho HT announced on the 16th that it will enter a researcher-initiated Phase 1 clinical trial for the immunosuppressant candidate drug for organ transplantation, ‘DNP007’, in joint research with Seoul National University Hospital.
Professor Namjoon Lee's team at Seoul National University Hospital plans and conducts a Phase 1 clinical trial to evaluate the safety, tolerability, and pharmacokinetic properties of DNP007 in healthy adult volunteers. Kumho HT is responsible for supporting tasks such as providing the clinical trial drug ‘DNP007’ humanized antibody, developing pharmacokinetic testing methods, and supplying non-clinical data.
The research team at Seoul National University Hospital has continuously conducted allogeneic liver transplantation studies in monkeys with the support of the Research-Centered Hospital Gene-Cell-Organ Fusion Biotherapeutics Platform Project (Principal Investigator: Professor Hyosu Kim). They have also proposed ‘DNP007’ as an alternative to calcineurin inhibitors, which cause serious side effects such as diabetes, neurotoxicity, renal dysfunction, and alopecia.
‘DNP007’ is a novel drug that provides immunosuppression for transplanted organs by regulating immune cells through MD-3, an anti-ICAM-1 humanized antibody therapeutic. Professor Sunghoe Park's team at Seoul National University Hospital demonstrated the therapeutic effect of MD-3 in diabetes treatment by suppressing acute immune rejection and enabling long-term survival of transplanted islets, thereby stably controlling blood glucose in a xenogeneic islet transplantation preclinical study for diabetes treatment.
A Kumho HT official stated, “This clinical trial conducted by the Department of Hepatobiliary and Pancreatic Surgery at Seoul National University Hospital is an important step to evaluate the safety of ‘DNP007’,” adding, “If this study proceeds successfully, the development of the ‘DNP007’ therapeutic will accelerate.”
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