On April 22, 2021 Synthekine Inc., an engineered cytokine therapeutics company, reported a new agreement with Stanford University to license cytokine partial agonist programs for IL-10, IL-12 and IL-22 (Press release, Synthekine, APR 22, 2021, View Source [SID1234578375]). These programs augment a growing pipeline of selective cytokine partial agonists at Synthekine that is maturing toward clinical development.
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Most cytokines are pleiotropic and drive a range of signaling responses across multiple cell types, which limits their potential as therapeutics. Research conducted in the laboratory of Chris Garcia, PhD, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator and professor of structural biology at Stanford, has shown that IL-10, IL-12, and IL-22 can be tuned to achieve specific signaling. Modifying these cytokines enables selective activity to be directed to specific cell types for therapeutic benefit, often by decoupling efficacy from toxic effects driven by non-specific immune system activation. Synthekine plans to leverage discoveries in IL-12, recently published in the journal Cell, to develop potential treatments for cancer, and the discoveries in IL-10, recently published in the journal Science, and IL-22, recently published in the journal Immunity, to develop potential treatments for autoimmune disease.
"Synthekine was founded two years ago with several cytokine partial agonist programs based on the work from the Garcia Laboratory, and we have already moved two of those programs into IND enabling development," said Debanjan Ray, CEO of Synthekine. "Extending our license with Stanford allows us to bring in three new promising cytokine partial agonist programs that we believe have considerable potential in treating cancer and autoimmune disease."