IL-18
Understanding Our Treatment Candidates
Our enhanced IL-18 is engineered to deliver a more sustained immune response for cancer treatment.
The Challenge:
IL-18 is a potent immune-stimulating cytokine, but its efficacy is blunted by IL-18 binding protein (IL-18BP), a high affinity decoy receptor that binds with and neutralizes IL-18, thereby rendering it ineffective. Native IL-18 is also limited by its short half-life.
Our Design:
Our IL-18 variant contains mutations that eliminate binding to IL-18BP while minimally impacting the native IL-18 structure. We have also fused IL-18 to protein scaffolds to extend the half-life and increase IL-18’s exposure. Together, these have demonstrated more durable immunological effect in preclinical studies.
Our IL-18 program is currently in discovery.