CytomX Therapeutics Inc. grabbed $20 million led by Pfizer Inc.’s venture capital arm to help partner its sneaky cancer fighters with new types of drugs and build out its own portfolio.
The investment, disclosed Tuesday, comes after CytomX on Monday announced a trio of key hires, including former Five Prime Therapeutics chief scientific officer Dr. W. Michael Kavanaugh.
South San Francisco’s CytomX is developing what it calls “probodies,” which sneak onto tumor cells’ binding sites until they are unmasked. The probodies link up with antibodies, the Y-shaped proteins that direct the immune system toward a foreign invader, to deliver a toxic payload of drugs more effectively and without many of the side effects of anti-cancer treatments, said CytomX CEO Sean McCarthy.
The coupling of CytomX’s technology with antibodies — including different mechanisms on which CytomX has been working — gives the company the ability to connect with the latest, greatest types of cancer fighters that use antibodies, including so-called checkpoint inhibitors that rev up the immune system. Another potential avenue, McCarthy said, is to link with the emerging field of T-cell engaging bispecific antibodies, which lead disease-fighting T-cells into producing proteins that enter a tumor cell to cause the tumor cell’s death.
“We’ve been working on this technology for the past couple of years, and just now we’re having partnering discussions,” McCarthy said.
CytomX’s approach has drawn much attention from the likes of Pfizer (NYSE: PFE), the world’s largest drug seller, and Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. (NYSE: BMY), which last year inked a potential $1.2 billion research and licensing deal with CytomX.
http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/blog/biotech/2015/01/cytomx-pfizer-bristol-myers-squibb-cancer.html?ana=yahoo
