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IGEM Therapeutics, a UK-based company founded in 2016, is the latest addition to the notoriously crowded immune-oncology space.

A concept that has been around for some time now, immune oncology is a technique that involves the enhancing or boosting of our immune system to fight off cancer as our natural immune response is not as powerful to ward off the cancer cells. Additionally, there is solid evidence pertaining to the effectiveness of this method, establishing that such therapies can indeed have long lasting effects and can fight cancer cells even after remission.

The London based company has now reportedly raised an impressive £2M in its Series A funding from UK-based Epidarex Capital to generate more efficient next-generation antibodies against well-known cancer targets.

The biotech has generated a proof-of-concept, outlining how IgG antibodies, which make up most of the monoclonal antibodies on the market has lesser efficacy in comparison to the IgE antibodies. The antibodies Ige and IgG differ only in terms of their Fc-region which plays a key role in immune responses. The company is currently busy building a portfolio of IgE candidates that target cancer antigens such as HER2, EGFR or PD-L1.

“We believe that IgE antibodies are ideally suited to the treatment of solid tumors and we look forward to working with IGEM to realize their potential,”

 reads a statement issued by Sophia Karagiannis, scientific founder of IGEM.

However, it is still too early to decide upon the success or firmly predict the efficacy of IgE molecules just yet as amplifying immune responses always comes with a bonus of exaggerated side-effects.

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