#3 INDUSTRY ROUNDUP: An Overture to Oncology

Mitochondrial energy supply was working fine, her rankings in the daily "AreYouHealthy?" had gone up, and she was working a lot smoother... yep, it had been a great few hours for Cella. She would die soon, and she knew it. There were a few errors in her system, her biochemical interactions did not work the way they used to, and it had weakened her over time. Soon it would be time to release the suicide bag. Cella pressed the button to cell-f (hehe) destruct....WAIT why wasn't it working? Cella panics- the enzyme isn't being released! Cella called out for resources... but she knew it was too late, as she turned into Canca.¹

Cancer as seen under the microscope. 

Cancer is one of the deadliest diseases to affect people. 1 in every 5 people develop cancer during their lifetime, and we don't have a cure yet. Oncology- the study of cancers- is a recent field, trying to chart unknown waters in the sea of questions we don't have answers to yet, which makes it a hot topic for the industry. 

Today's spotlight will be occupied by: *drumroll please*

-Adcendo:

What are ADCs? Antibody-drug conjugates are a class of biopharmaceutical drugs which aim to treat cancer. The unique thing about them is that they kill tumour cells while sparing healthy cells. Their structure is composed of an antibody linked to a cytotoxic² load. That's kinda cool, as the razor sharp targeting skills of the antibody with the deadly cytotoxin. The antibody, obviously, targets the tumour antigen, and attach themselves to it. The antibody-antigen triggers a signal in the tumour cell which absorbs the antibody- effectively absorbing the cytotoxin, which kills the tumour cell! Neat.

Adcendo is developing ADCs for cancer treatment. Their first target is provides an efficient entry point for an ADC into target-positive cancer cells, which works as a drug internalization pump to enhance targeted effect. Cool!

-Theseus:

Let me start this off by introducing you to tyrosine kinase inhibitors. Fancy! When I first came across it, the word was on my head for weeks! It's also a nice way to flaunt your BioQuotient *grin*. Anyway, let's get cracking. A tyrosine kinase inhibitors basically limits the action of tyrosine kinases. Done! Haha... yeah I know I was being like well, obvious here. OK, getting serious here. A tyrosine kinase is basically the on/off switch in many cellular functions. They belong to a larger group of enzymes called protein kinases- which attach phosphates to amino acids, phosphorylate protein, signalling within the cell and regulating cell activity. A mutation that causes certain tyrosine kinases to be constitutively active has been associated with cancers and can become an unregulated enzyme due to mutations. This causes havoc; systems malfunction, resulting often in cancers. This is where TKIs come in (let's take leukaemia as an example). They switch off tyrosine kinase made by a gene in leukaemia cells. This slows the bone marrow from making abnormal WBCs and allows the leukaemia cells to mature and die. 

Theseus believes we can predict how cancer mutates, and use this to stay ahead of future mutations and overcome the challenge of treatment resistance. Existing TKIs are limited by mutating cancers. They aim to design TKIs that specifically target known mutations preventing the emergence of new ones. Cool!

Visit their sites to know more!

Adcendo

Theseus

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Disclaimer: Information regarding these companies has been sourced from their websites, no copyright infringement intended. Visit their websites to know more.

¹ Cringe worthy I know, but I couldn't come up with a better name. 

² 'Anti-cancer', if u can call it that.

Also, a very Happy Fathers' Day to all the wonderful dads out there :) !