SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, December 6, 2016 – Sutro Biopharma Inc. today announced that it has launched IND-enabling studies, including preparation for GLP toxicology, of STRO-001, an antibody drug conjugate, or ADC, that targets CD74, a protein highly expressed in B-cell malignancies.  STRO-001 demonstrated efficient cell killing in multiple malignant B-cell lines and exhibited potent anti-tumor activity in six mouse tumor models of non-Hodgkin lymphoma and multiple myeloma, according to studies recently completed by Sutro.

Dr. Arturo Molina, a medical oncologist and Sutro’s chief medical officer, described the study findings this past Sunday in an oral presentation entitled “Targeting CD74 with Novel Antibody Drug Conjugates for the Treatment of B-Cell Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma” during a session on “Lymphoma – Pre-Clinical – Chemotherapy and Biologic Agents – Novel Therapeutic Strategies” at the annual meeting of the American Society of Hematology in San Diego.  The Sutro STRO-001 research team  presented additional findings yesterday in a poster entitled “Discovery and Preclinical Development of Novel CD74-Targeting Antibody-Drug Conjugates with Significant Activity in Multiple Myeloma Cell Lines and Xenograft Models,” at the ASH annual meeting.

“Based on these findings, we are launching IND-enabling and GLP toxicology studies of an ADC developed with Sutro’s proprietary cell-free protein synthesis and site-specific conjugation platforms, which facilitate multiple rounds of antibody and ADC optimization,” Sutro CEO Bill Newell said.

“With these data, we have encouraging preclinical evidence of CD74’s potential usefulness as an ADC target,” added Dr. Amrita Krishnan, Professor of Hematology and Hematopoietic Cell Transplantation, Director of the Judy and Bernard Briskin Center for Multiple Meyloma Research and Director of the Multiple Myeloma Program at the City of Hope Comprehensive Cancer Center.
Sutro’s novel ADCs efficiently killed multiple myeloma, mantle cell lymphoma, diffuse large B-cell lymphoma and other Non-Hodgkin lymphoma cell lines in vitro.  In vivo, these ADCs significantly reduced tumor growth in ANBL-6, CAG and ARP-1 multiple myeloma models and WSU-DLCL2, OCI-Ly10, SU-DHL-6 lymphoma models.

About Sutro Biopharma

Sutro Biopharma Inc. located in South San Francisco, develops best-in-class antibody drug conjugate (ADC) and multi-specific antibody-based therapeutics for cancer therapy, including immuno-oncology therapies. Sutro’s discovery and development efforts are driven by its proprietary Xpress CF+™ platforms, a biochemical synthesis system that enables rapid and systematic evaluation of protein structure-activity relationships, as well as rapid and predictable scalability for manufacturing in Sutro’s cGMP facility. In addition to developing its own drug candidate pipeline, which is focused on mono- and bi-specific ADCs, Sutro is collaborating with select pharmaceutical and biotech companies to discover and develop novel therapeutics.

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