mAbs have revolutionized targeted therapy but still often cause side effects when the target is expressed in healthy tissue. CytomX Therapeutics Inc. thinks its Probodies will get around those safety issues because they are activated locally at the site of disease.

CytomX expects the proteolytically activated antibody technology to result in compounds with an improved therapeutic index against validated targets, as well as compounds against targets previously thought to be undruggable because they are expressed in diseased and healthy tissue.