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Pancreatic cancer is the fourth most common cause of death from cancer in the U.S. The overall 5-year survival rate for this disease is 8.5%. Glypican-1 (GPC1), a cell surface heparan sulfate proteoglycan protein that is overexpressed in pancreatic cancer. Due to this preferential expression, GPC1 represents a potential candidate for targeted therapy for patients with pancreatic cancer and other GPC1 expressing cancers such as prostate cancer.

Human mesothelin is overexpressed by various cancers such as synovial sarcoma, mesothelioma, and ovarian, lung, esophageal, and gastric cancers. This selective expression on certain cancers suggests that mesothelin is an excellent target for anticancer therapeutics. However, a large fragment (“the shed portion”) of mesothelin is constantly shed from cells, and all current anti-mesothelin antibodies bind to the shed portion.

The chemokine receptor, CCR4 is a seven transmembrane G protein-coupled cell surface receptor molecule with selective expression on cells of the hematopoietic system. In adult T cell leukemia (ATL), the cell-surface expression of CCR4 on leukemic cells has been found to be nearly universal. Therefore, a CCR4-directed chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) -cell may provide an effective therapeutic against ATL.

Mesothelioma is an aggressive cancer covering anatomic surfaces (e.g. lining of the lungs, heart, abdomen, etc.) that resists multi-modality therapies. Regional recurrence of mesothelioma from residual tumor cells prevents long-term benefits after surgical resection. Furthermore, there is no clinical consensus on intracavitary adjuvants that are effective in extending the tumor reduction effect of surgery.

RNA interference (RNAi) is a biological response to double-stranded RNA that regulates expression of protein-coding genes and is a natural mechanism for gene silencing. Delivery of short, interfering RNA (siRNA) leads to RNAi of the targeted genes. 

CD19 and CD20 are promising targets for the treatment of B-Cell malignancies.  Unfortunately, some clinical studies have shown that there is a loss of CD19 or CD20 expression in various cases of lymphomas and leukemias, particularly after treatment with an agent that targets CD19 (e.g., anti-CD19 CAR-T). However, studies have shown that expression of one protein is retained when the other is lost. This suggests that a therapeutic with the ability to simultaneously target both CD19 and CD20 could represent a solution to the drawbacks of current therapies. 

In medical diagnostic procedures for examining the cervix and the tissues of the vagina and vulva, long working-distance (-30 cm) lighted binocular microscopes (colposcope) that provide up to 25x optical magnification are used to create an illuminated magnified view. Speculum dilations can give rise to specular reflections from the tissue surface, causing physicians to overlook possible abnormalities – thus decreasing the quality of a colposcopy. 

Immortalization of plasma cells leads to Multiple Myeloma (MM). Signaling Lymphocyte Activation Molecule F7 (SLAMF7) is highly expressed on the malignant plasma cells that constitute Multiple Myeloma. The expression of SLAMF7 by MM cells and lack of expression on nonhematologic cells makes SLAMF7 a promising target for chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapies for the treatment of MM. 

Adoptive cell therapy (ACT) using tumor-specific T cells can produce positive clinical responses in some cancer patients. Nevertheless, several obstacles to the successful use of ACT for the treatment of cancer and other conditions remain. For example, one or more of the in vivo persistence, survival, and antitumor activity of tumor-specific T cells can, in some cases, decrease following adoptive transfer. Accordingly, there is a need for methods of obtaining a robust population of tumor-specific T cells for ACT.

Immune checkpoint inhibitors (e.g. CTLA-4, PD-L1) have recently shown significant promise in the treatment of cancer.  However, when used alone, these checkpoint inhibitors are limited by the absence or repression of immune cells within the targeted cancer.  For those cancers associated with these limited immune systems, there remains a need for effective therapies.  Agents capable of recruiting and activating immune cells to these types of cancers could extend the overall and complete response rates of combination therapies within the immunooncology domain.