Base to Base biotech podcast 50: Drugs for kidney transplants, glycans, and drug delivery

As this week’s podcast comes hot on the heels of International Women’s Day and World Kidney Day, which was yesterday, we’ve been able to squeeze them both in. The conversations this week are with Hansa Biopharma CEO Renée Aguiar-Lucander, about imlifidase for kidney transplant patients; Kyron.bio CEO Emilia McLaughlin, about glycosylation; and hydrogel-based drug delivery solutions company AmacaThera’s CEO, Mike Cooke.Times:03:56 Kyron.bio19:14 AmacaThera43:01 Hansa BiopharmaHansa BiopharmaHansa Biopharma AB is set for a busy year. In December, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has notified the company that the previously accepted Biologics License Application (BLA) for imlifidase has been assigned a Prescription Drug User Fee Act (PDUFA) action date of December 19, 2026.Imlifidase is conditionally approved in the EU, Norway, Liechtenstein, Iceland and the UK under the tradename IDEFIRIX for the desensitisation treatment of highly sensitised adult kidney transplant patients with a positive crossmatch against an available deceased donor. IDEFIRIX is also approved in Australia and Switzerland.The company also has HNSA-5487, a next-generation IgG-cleaving molecule being developed for Guillain-Barré Syndrome (GBS).Kyron.bioFrench biotech company Kyron.bio and pharma company Servier recently announced a partnership to advance precision glycosylation in antibody therapeutics.The partnership underlines the two companies’ vision to unlock the potential of glycans in next-generation biologics design to deliver safer and more effective therapeutics for patientsKyron.bio’s glycobiology platform aims at enhancing the efficacy, safety, and scalability of next-generation antibody therapeutics across multiple disease areas. To date, engineering of glycans have been under-exploited, due to technical challenges, limiting the use of glycan engineering in drug design.AmacaTheraAmacaThera is a developer of next-generation hydrogel-based drug delivery solutions. Using a blend of known polymers, AmacaThera’s clinically validated hydrogel platform is transforming drug delivery by enabling the precise, tunable, and sustained release of a range of therapeutics, from small molecules to biologics.Transforming from liquid to gel at body temperature, AmacaThera’s hydrogel enables drugs to be delivered to and stay where they are needed and released over days or weeks, depending on the specific needs of each therapeutic application.To get in touch with guest suggestions, or to sponsor or advertise on the podcast, please email [email protected]