Our science
Mesenkia was founded 2024 on a scientific foundation from a long-standing Japanese-Swedish research collaboration, with the intention to develop treatments to cure the aggressive brain tumor, glioblastoma. The research resulted in Mesenkia’s proprietary KITAIbodies® that have the capacity to reshape how the field approaches targeted therapy in terminal cancers
Our publications
In the latest pre-print article from Mesenkia’s founders, they conclude that HVEM represents a promising therapeutic target for the treatment of mesenchymal glioblastoma.
- They identify and validate the tumor promoting factor APRIL (a proliferation-inducing ligand) as a ligand for HVEM in glioblastoma
- The target protein HVEM is upregulated in glioma initiating cells (GICs) from patients with the most aggressive form of glioblastoma, called the mesenchymal subtype.
- That APRIL interacts with HVEM to induce NF-kB signaling, a critical pathway for cancer development.
- Blocking HVEM inhibits glioblastoma invasion and growth
- They validate the potential for KITAIbodies® as therapeutic drug to treat glioblastoma
Fig. (A) In vivo bioluminescent imaging of mesenchymal GICs in which TNFRSF14 had been knocked down by shRNA, using the firefly luciferase method. Quantification data of bioluminescence are shown in the lower panels, as mean ± SD (n=8 mice per group; ***P<0.001; Tukey’s HSD test). (B) Survival curves of mice bearing tumors derived from shRNA-expressing mesenchymal GICs (n=8 mice per group; **P<0.01, ***P<0.001; two-tailed log-rank test with Bonferroni’s correction).