Tuning The Myeloid Compartment With A Best-in-Class CDMO

By Alicia Levey, Chief Operating Officer, and Kiren Khanduja, Associate Director, CMC, Pionyr Immunotherapeutics, Inc.

Alicia Levey and Kiren Khanduja of Pionyr Immunotherapeutics –– a San Francisco-based biotech with a pipeline of first-in-class clinical-stage cancer immunotherapies targeting the tumor microenvironment –– discuss the basis for selection of Lonza to meet Pionyr’s goals to rapidly develop a third lead candidate from the start and to scale-up manufacturing of two clinical-stage immuno-oncology treatments after tech transfer.

A Different Type of Immuno-Oncology Drug

Pionyr Immunotherapeutics was one of the first companies in the immuno-oncology space to look beyond the T-cell and focus on targeting immunosuppressive myeloid cells as an anti-cancer therapeutic strategy. Building on work initially conducted in Max Krummel’s laboratory at UCSF, Pionyr has built a target discovery platform and pipeline of next-generation immuno-oncology therapeutics targeting immunosuppressive myeloid cells (monocytes, macrophages and neutrophils) with unique mechanisms of action (depletion, activation and reprogramming).