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Syros' Drug Discovery Research in Immuno-Oncology Highlighted at UCSD Moores Cancer Center SymposiumSyros Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: SYRS), a biopharmaceutical company pioneering the development of medicines to control the expression of disease-driving genes, today announced that its collaborator, Andrew Lowy, M.D., Professor of Surgery and Chief of the Division of Surgical Oncology at the University of California San Diego Moores Cancer Center, presented Syros' drug discovery research in immuno-oncology at the Moores Cancer Center Industry/Academia Translational Oncology Symposium. As part of a research collaboration in pancreatic cancer with the Lowy laboratory at the Moores Cancer Center, Syros scientists discovered alterations in regulatory regions of the genome in tumor-associated macrophages in a subset of patient tissues. Because these alterations are unique to the immunosuppressive state, they could point to genes critical for driving immunosuppression in the tumor microenvironment, as well as potential drug targets to reactivate the immune system to fight cancer. "Syros' gene control platform provides a unique lens for understanding how cancer can evade and manipulate the body's immune system to fuel its growth and become resistant to existing therapies," Dr. Lowy said. "Through investigation of the immune components within the tumor microenvironment, our hope is to develop medicines that can unleash our natural defenses against cancer." Together with the Lowy laboratory, Syros used its proprietary gene control platform to isolate tumor-associated macrophages directly from pancreatic cancer patient tissues and analyze regulatory regions of DNA in these cells. Then, by comparing those regions in the tumor-associated macrophages to those from healthy donors, Syros scientists identified alterations unique to the immunosuppressive state. Tumor-associated macrophages are of significant interest in immuno-oncology because they play a key role in the body's immune response to cancer, with M1 macrophages promoting immune-mediated tumor regression and M2 macrophages allowing tumors to grow unimpeded. "The inclusion of our research at this conference reflects the recognition among academic and industry leaders of the promise of Syros' gene control platform to uncover important insights into the mechanisms employed by cancer cells to essentially shut down the immune response within the tumor and to create drugs that can increase killing of tumor cells by the immune system," said Eric Olson (News - Alert), Ph.D., Chief Scientific Officer f Syros. "We believe our focus on the regulatory genome of immune and tumor cells isolated from primary tumors represents a distinct approach to immuno-oncology with the potential to provide a profound benefit for subsets of cancer patients." Syros has a broader immuno-oncology drug discovery effort outside of the collaboration focused on identifying and drugging novel targets to control the function of immune cells within the tumor microenvironment. Using a similar approach to the one used in the Lowy collaboration, Syros has identified and validated a drug target that, when inhibited, re-activates tumor-associated macrophages to a pro-tumor killing state. Syros' immuno-oncology research is focused on cancers in which the tumor microenvironment is known to play a key role in disease progression or drug resistance, including glioblastoma and pancreatic, triple negative breast and ovarian cancers. By analyzing immune and tumor cells directly in patient tumor tissues, Syros aims to better understand the heterogeneity of immune responses among patients and identify subsets of patients most likely to respond to specific immunotherapy strategies.
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