Tumor cell surface targets off the beaten path

Hidden among the piles of ADCs and bispecifics against top targets such as HER2 are compounds targeting cancer cell surface proteins with less crowded pipelines. Presentations at this year’s ASCO and AACR provided a window into early-stage programs with less obvious targets, including a crop of neuronal regulators expressed by multiple solid tumors.

Targets that are overexpressed on tumor cell surfaces, ideally with little or no expression on healthy tissues, serve as homing beacons for a wide range of therapeutic modalities, including mAbs and next-generation biologics such as antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs), bispecific antibodies and CAR T cells...