US Patent Issued to Xilio Development on June 23 for "Masked IL-2 cytokines and methods of use thereof" (Massachusetts Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., July 15 -- United States Patent no. 12,662,520, issued on June 23, was assigned to Xilio Development Inc. (Waltham, Mass.).

"Masked IL-2 cytokines and methods of use thereof" was invented by Ertan Eryilmaz (Waltham, Mass.), Carl Uli Bialucha (Waltham, Mass.) and Dheeraj Tomar (Waltham, Mass.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "The present invention provides, among other things, a masked cytokine comprising an interleukin 2 (IL-2) polypeptide, a VHH masking moiety, an anti-PD1 targeting moiety, and an engineered Fc domain comprising a tumor-associated protease cleavage site. In such masked cytokine, the IL-2 polypeptide is engineered to be activatable by a protease at a target site...