Patent 7919594 was granted and assigned to Vaccinex, Inc on April, 2011 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
Compositions and methods are provided for treating diseases associated with CD100, including certain types of cancers, autoimmune diseases, inflammatory diseases including central nervous system (CNS) and peripheral nervous system (PNS) inflammatory diseases, transplant rejections, and invasive angiogenesis. Compositions include anti-CD100 antibodies capable of binding to a soluble human CD100 antigen or a CD100 antigen located on the surface of a human CD100-expressing cell, wherein the antibody has CD100 blocking activity that is achieved by having at least one optimized CDR or FWR engineered within the variable region of the antibody. Compositions also include antigen-binding fragments, variants, and derivatives of the monoclonal antibodies, cell lines producing these antibody compositions, and isolated nucleic acid molecules encoding the amino acid sequences of the antibodies. The invention further includes pharmaceutical compositions comprising the anti-CD100 antibodies of the invention, or antigen-binding fragments, variants, or derivatives thereof, in a pharmaceutically acceptable carrier, and methods of use of these anti-CD100 antibodies.