Palleon: Sweeter checkpoints

With two platforms targeting glycan ligands and their receptors, and a third to match cancer patients to a therapy, Palleon Pharmaceuticals Inc. aims to treat cancer by removing the brakes on a class of checkpoints found on both adaptive and innate immune cells.

Glyco-immune checkpoints are receptors on immune cells that turn cell activation off when they detect the presence of glycan patterns on tumors. Because glyco-immune receptors occur on both innate and adaptive immune cells, inhibiting their activity could have a broader immune effect than inhibitors of a conventional checkpoints, which occur only on adaptive immune cells like T cells...