OGD2 Pharma SAS has been incorporated in Nantes on 28 October 2014 with the mission to research, develop and commercialize with pharma partners innovative cancer immunotherapies against the O-acetylated form of the GD2 ganglioside (OAcGD2).
As its first cousin GD2, the OAcGD2 glycolipid is highly expressed at the cell membrane of orphan pediatric cancers (e.g. neuroblastoma), adult cancers (e.g. glioma, sarcoma, melanoma), and at the surface of cancer stem cells (e.g. in breast cancers) that are thought to be the chemo- and radio-resistant cells initiating cancer recurrences.
Anti-GD2 immunotherapies – monoclonal antibodies, immunocytokines, chimeric antigen receptor (CAR cells) – have been shown highly promising, but unfortunately also quite toxic (dose-limiting pain and neuropathies) since GD2 is also expressed on the surface of normal nerves and brain cells.
By contrast to GD2, OAcGD2 is not expressed on normal nerves and brain cells. Thus, with anti-OAcGD2 therapies, toxicity to the nervous system is not observed in animal models and is not expected in human.
Thanks to this exquisite tumor-specificity of the OAcGD2 antigen, OGD2 Pharma develops safe and efficacious cancer immunotherapies to meet the medical needs of pediatric and adult cancer patients in both orphan and major indications.