Nectin Therapeutics creates a roadblock to stop cancer cells from evading immunotherapy treatments, boosting the success of the therapy.
One of the biggest breakthroughs in cancer treatment today is immunotherapy. Rather than flooding the body with toxic chemicals and radiation, this method recruits the patient’s own system to fight the cancer.
While the immune system’s job is to detect and destroy intruders, cancer cells have various ways to disable it. Immunotherapy, therefore, aims to help immune cells recover their natural function.
Although a powerful class of immunotherapy drugs, PD-1 inhibitors, was approved by the FDA in 2014, only 20-30 percent of cancer patients respond well to them. Even among those who initially respond, often the therapy stops working once cancer cells learn how to evade PD-1 inhibitors.
“The reason seems to be that like cars in a traffic jam, the cancer cells find an alternative route to bypass the treatment, engage the immune cell [and shut it down],” explains Dr. Gavin Samuels, executive director of Jerusalem-based Nectin Therapeutics.
The company is named after the nectin family of proteins, whose pathways are a common alternate route for cancer cells to evade immunotherapy.
Established in 2017 based on a collaboration between scientists at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the University of Rijeka, Croatia, Nectin Therapeutics’ drugs set up a roadblock in the nectin pathways.
Used alone or in conjunction with PD-1 inhibitors, this treatment could be a strong contender in the quest to boost the success of immunotherapy for cancer patients.