Immunomedics Inc. announced Thursday that it has received athird $50,000 Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grantfrom the National Cancer Institute (NCI) to engineer ahumanized antibody as a potential treatment for breast cancer.

Immunomedics of Morris Plains, N.J., received the award inconjunction with its research collaborators at the Garden StateCancer Center in Newark.

Immunomedics' (NASDAQ:IMMU) goal is "to develop ahumanized breast cancer antibody that could attach to thesurface of a breast cancer cell and deliver a toxic payload in theform of a radioisotope," said David Goldenberg, the company'schairman. To create the humanized antibody, the researcherswill use complementarity determining region (CDR) graftingtechniques to combine the CDRs from a mouse monoclonalantibody into the framework of a human one, explained ShawnLeung, Immunomedics' director of molecular biology andprincipal investigator on the SBIR grant.

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