Biotech Values

[poorgradstudent]

TRIL:

immunogenicity concerns: do you have a link or explanation that details these concerns? I follow this one, and don't remember seeing such an issue, but I can miss details you won't.

You haven't missed anything; I wasn't suggesting it has happened. Apologies for that confusion.

My concern is that when you make a fusion protein like they are, you end up making something that is not native. The points of joining and other engineered elements of the fusion protein could invoke an immune response. For example, in DNDN's antigen cassette, it wasn't the GMCSF or PAP proteins that elicited a response but rather the narrow linker region generated between the two to create the fusion. A similar thing could happen with TRIL's candidate.

Until they use some type of immune competent model to test for the presence of antibodies against the infused protein, we won't have much of an answer.

Note that a response against the fusion protein could go one of two ways:

1) Body creates an immune response towards it and the infused protein gets rapidly cleared.
2) The immune response against the fusion protein helps localize the immune response to the area where the protein is doing its work, creating a type of bystander effect.

*If* an immune response is generated, I think #1 is a much more likely outcome and would bode poorly for the program.