Pandion unveils new data to back up strategy of activating PD-1 to treat autoimmune diseases

Inhibiting the immune checkpoint protein PD-1 to combat tumors is the basis of several successful immuno-oncology drugs, including Merck’s Keytruda. But those drugs are known to raise the risk of some autoimmune diseases, such as colitis.

Startup Pandion Therapeutics is taking that risk and turning it into an opportunity—creating drugs that activate PD-1 instead of inhibiting it in the hopes of addressing several autoimmune diseases. It presented preclinical data on several of those drugs at the virtual meeting of the Federation of Clinical Immunology Societies (FOCIS).