Monopar Therapeutics LLC
Developing orphan oncology drugs
This article was originally published in Start Up
Executive Summary
Monopar Therapeutics LLC is focusing on developing treatments for hard-to-treat cancer subtypes. Its lead program, huATN-658, is a humanized monoclonal antibody that targets the urokinase plasminogen activator receptor (uPAR). A protein receptor, uPAR is found on certain cancer cells, but it has little to no expression on healthy tissue; it is linked with tumor cell survival, its expression increases in high-grade and metastatic disease and it is correlated with a worse prognosis in several cancers.