TIGIT therapy for cancer treatment – TIGITtherapy – ERC

Treating tumors with immune-related therapies is one of the most exciting and promising advancements made in the past decade. Cancer immunotherapy drugs have captured nearly 50% of the overall oncology drugs market. TIGIT is an important checkpoint inhibitory receptor discovered by our group in 2009. It is constitutively expressed by various immune cells and its expression is further increased on tumor infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs). TIGIT recognizes two main ligands, PVR and Nectin2 that are highly expressed on various tumors. Blockage of TIGIT on TILs either alone or in combination with another checkpoint inhibitory receptor, PD-1, leads to increased T and Natural Killer (NK) cell activity in vitro and inhibited tumor growth in vivo. We developed highly specific blocking antibodies, that block TIGIT at pM affinity and restore effector function of NK and T cells