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We started with the question:

What do all cancers have in common? GO from there.

Making the best cancer therapeutics
for solid tumors

What would the ideal cancer therapeutic look like?

•  It would be specific – killing tumors but sparing healthy tissues.

•  It would be potent – killing all cancer cells in a tumor.

•  It would be broad-spectrum – treating a variety of cancers.

By exploiting the biology of cancer glycoproteins, GO is developing a new class of cancer therapeutics that are exquisitely cancer-specific, potent and broad-spectrum.

Targeting Cancer-specific O-glycoproteins

Glycoproteins are proteins decorated with glycans (long chains of sugars). There are two main types of glycoproteins: N-glycoproteins and O-glycoproteins, which differ in the type of glycans and the manner of glycan-to-protein attachment.

All cells have O-glycoproteins on their surface, but cancer O-glycoproteins are unique in that they have aberrantly truncated O-glycans.

Cancer cells have proteins with truncated O-glycosylation, a cancer specific epitope

O-glycans create a novel epitope space for cancer targeting

O-glycosylation is a co-driver in cancer development:

  • Loss of cell-cell and cell matrix adhesion
  • Increased proliferation and invasion

O-glycoproteins with truncated O-glycans are are absent from normal tissues, but are present in 60-80% of human epithelial cancers, by far, the largest cancer family. The high prevalence and tumor specificity make truncated O-glycans exceptional targets as the foundation of higher performance therapeutics.

GO’s novel therapeutics promise a more improved therapeutic window than the current state of targeting cancer.

Kudelka, M, et al., Simple Sugars to Complex Disease – Mucin-Type O-Glycans in CancerAdv Cancer Res. 2015; 126: 53–135.

O-glycans are highly expressed on a broad range of cancer indications.

GO’s growing portfolio of cancer therapeutics address significant unmet patient needs.

Developing High-affinity Antibodies against
Cancer O-glycoproteins

GO has developed a platform-based approach for the creation of high-affinity monoclonal antibodies that target cancer-specific O-glycoproteins.

Current generation of antibody-based cancer therapies

Targeting peptide epitopes:

  • High affinity antibodies, but
  • Poor cancer selectivity/specificity

Current generation of antibody-based cancer therapies

Targeting glcyopeptide epitopes:

  • High affinity, and
  • Great cancer selectivity/specificity

Our approach hinges on successfully pinpointing where O-glycan epitopes are on a particular cancer-associated glycoprotein, and then employing a variety of antibody-discovery technologies to generate high affinity antibodies that are selective for these tumor-specific glyco-epitopes.

GO has a growing portfolio of cancer-specific antibodies and early stage CAR-T, T-cell bispecific and ADC therapies.

Potent Cancer-killing Formulations

To achieve potent oncolytic activity, we are formulating our high-affinity cancer-specific antibodies into powerful cancer-killing modalities:

Chimericantigen receptors (CARs)

T cell bispecifics (TCBs)

Antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs)

Immuncytokines

Because our platform supports multiple treatment modalities, we can link cancer-specific targets to the most promising type of treatment for specific malignancies.

A robust and growing pipeline of treatments that promise to extendimmuno-oncology and other cell therapies to the vast array of intractable solid tumors.