Approach To Cancer
With the development and commercialization of immunotherapy drugs such as checkpoint inhibitors, the field of immuno-oncology is transforming the treatment of patients with cancer.
With the development and commercialization of immunotherapy drugs such as checkpoint inhibitors, the field of immuno-oncology is transforming the treatment of patients with cancer.
However, cures remain elusive, and many cancer patients experience only modest clinical benefit.
A challenge facing the field of immuno-oncology is to develop new approaches to drive potent, tumor-specific immune responses that provide therapeutic benefit to a large number of patients.
Gritstone’s scientific founders published an important discovery in immuno-oncology: in patients with solid tumors who respond to checkpoint inhibitors, mutations in the tumor’s DNA produce critical new targets. These targets, called tumor-specific neoantigens, are unique to tumor cells and can be recognized and targeted for destruction by the patient’s own immune system.
Neoantigens represent a novel class of targets for advancing cancer immunotherapy and have been validated in cancer patients as critical T cell targets. However, the identification of neoantigens presents a key therapeutic challenge. Some tumors have hundreds of mutations, but only a minority result in true tumor-specific neoantigens found on the surface of tumor cells – making them difficult to find and target appropriately.
Neoantigens can be classified as either individualized, meaning each patient has their own unique neoantigens, or shared, in which common driver mutations are found across some patients.