AACR: Bay Area biotech bets on an­ti­bod­ies armed with im­muno-stim­u­lant to fight check­point-re­sis­tant can­cers

The sci­en­tist be­hind the first prostate can­cer vac­cine Provenge — once cel­e­brat­ed as a his­toric break­through, but now a fad­ing star — has de­vised a type of armed an­ti­body — loaded with an im­muno-stim­u­lant rather than a cy­to­tox­ic pay­load — to fight can­cers re­sis­tant to the army of ex­ist­ing check­point in­hibitors.

The re­searcher, Stan­ford’s Ed En­gle­man, has built on his re­search in­to den­drit­ic cells — which are con­sid­ered ‘sen­tinels’ of the im­mune sys­tem as they are re­spon­si­ble for in­duc­ing im­mune T-cell re­spons­es — to de­vel­op this Im­mune-Stim­u­lat­ing An­ti­body Con­ju­gate (ISAC) tech­nol­o­gy, which was un­veiled by ex­clu­sive li­censee Bolt Bio­ther­a­peu­tics at the Amer­i­can As­so­ci­a­tion for Can­cer Re­search (AACR) Con­fer­ence on Mon­day.

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