Zag Bio: Rewiring the thymus for antigen-specific tolerance

Cambridge, Mass.-based Zag Bio is betting the surest way to tame autoimmunity is to go back to where T cells are born, using bispecific antibodies to steer self-antigens into the thymus and train the immune system to tolerate them instead of attack.

The strategy builds on the idea that central tolerance can be engineered if the right antigen can be delivered to the right thymic cells. “The biology had been derisked,” Zag Bio Inc. CSO John Kulman told BioCentury. The question, he said, was, “How do you get something systemically administered to the thymus to perturb that biology to treat autoimmune disease?”...