While the advent of advanced genomic and proteomic technologies fueled a wave of next-generation cancer treatments by enabling scientists to home in on targets with disease-driving mutations or high expression levels in diseased tissues, Immuto Scientific thinks the next ‘omic frontier — surfaceomics — can lead to even more precise therapies.
A major obstacle in oncology drug development, Immuto Scientific CEO Faraz Choudhury told FirstWord, is dose-limiting toxicities; it’s hard to find disease-specific targets that aren’t present in healthy tissues.
That’s where surfaceomics comes in. Because proteins adopt different structures based on their function or environment, the Immuto team hypothesised that within the tumour microenvironment, a target protein will have a different structure than in healthy cells.
Read the full story here: https://firstwordpharma.com/story/6093599