Cytokine interest shows no sign of waning

It might have come as a surprise to learn that Nektar and Bristol Myers Squibb’s IL-2 project bempegaldesleukin is still in play. Even more surprisingly, lacklustre results seen so far with other IL-2 assets have not put off a host of other companies from pursuing projects based on this cytokine in oncology.

These all aim to improve on Proleukin, which is approved but has well-known toxicity issues. A look at the pipeline shows various ways that groups hope to do so, and one major approach is trying to avoid the alpha unit of the IL-2 receptor.