Our Discovery Engine unveils unique insights into the biology of cancer – uncovering a compelling picture of the context-dependent manner in which the human immune system fights back. This “tumor context” may provide novel targets for development of antibody-based therapeutics.

Functional Clusters

Multiple canonical and non-canonical targets have accrued from our efforts. While there is often little information available on unique antigens, our data reveals a “functional clustering” of the targets to which cancer patients were mounting an immune response. In essence, these findings provide critical clues about the key methods by which each patient’s immune system fights back against their disease. These functional clusters may provide an important insight into the most important tumor-driven processes that should be attacked to overcome a disease threat.

It is well accepted that cancer cells express proteins that differ, in multiple ways, from those found in normal cells. Those abnormal proteins can be seen as foreign by the human immune system and antibodies generated against them. Our Discovery Engine catalogs those antibody/target pairs for the potential to generate new therapeutics for the treatment of disease.
Ectopic Expression
An underappreciated feature of tumor cells is that some proteins normally found intracellularly appear to be selectively located on the extracellular side of plasma membrane in cancer cells. These ectopically expressed proteins are seen as targets by the immune system.
  • This ectopic cell surface expression may be used to selectively target tumor cells. Our Discovery Engine identifies ectopic targets and antibodies simultaneously
  • Represent a novel class of targets potentially suitable for development of next generation ADC (antibody-drug conjugate) and TCE (T cell engager) therapeutics

Functional outputs of our Discovery Engine can provide early insights into potential modalities for patient-derived antibodies specific for both canonical and non-canonical targets.