Monopar Therapeutics announces early human clinical data for MNPR-101-Zr

Monopar Therapeutics announced early data from its ongoing open-label MNPR-101-Zr Phase 1 imaging and dosimetry clinical trial confirming MNPR-101-Zr’s tumor targeting ability in humans. MNPR-101 is Monopar’s proprietary first-in-class humanized monoclonal antibody that targets cancers expressing the urokinase plasminogen activator receptor. These include a majority of all triple-negative breast, colorectal, bladder, ovarian, gastric, and pancreatic cancers. A total-body positron emission tomography image was taken at 168 hours post administration of MNPR-101-Zr of the first cancer patient in the trial with one of the known high uPAR-expressing cancer types. The results, seen in Figure 1, demonstrate the specificity, durability, and uptake of MNPR-101-Zr in the metastatic tumors relative to normal tissue. The regions of higher uptake also align with the locations of the previously observed metastatic tumors on conventional FDG PET imaging. MNPR-101-Zr was evaluated against FDG, the gold standard for detecting metastatic tumors. Figure 2 shows FDG uptake in its highest-uptake tumor compared to MNPR-101-Zr uptake in the same tumor imaged on the same Siemens Biograph Vision Quadra PET/CT scanner. Monopar recently received clearance in Australia to initiate an MNPR-101-Lu Phase 1 therapeutic clinical trial which is currently scheduled to launch in the fourth quarter of this calendar year.