Disco: Mapping protein communities on cancer cell surfaces

ARTICLE | Emerging Company Profile

German biotech has already mapped small cell lung cancer surface proteins, colorectal is next

By Danielle Golovin, Senior Biopharma Analyst

December 6, 2024 12:38 AM UTC

Disco launched in January with a €20 million ($21.8 million) seed round led by European VC Sofinnova Partners, and a platform that can map the proximity of proteins to one another on the surfaces of tumor cells. The goal is to identify new targets for antibody-drug conjugates and bispecifics.

Knowing which proteins expressed by cancer cells are brought to the cell surface is not a trivial task, and many surface proteins remain to be discovered,  Disco Pharmaceuticals GmbH co-founder and CEO Roman Thomas told BioCentury. The biotech’s platform not only enables systematic characterization of the “surfaceome” of cancer cells, but allows it to gauge the spatial relationships of surface proteins to each other, which can identify target pairs for multispecifics. …