Glycotope GmbH

Glycotope is a clinical-stage immuno-oncology company built on world-leading glycobiology expertise, with a mature and growing pipeline of proprietary cancer therapies. Our innovative GlycoExpress® technology enables the generation of high-quality oncology candidates with fully human glycosylation, improving activity, drug characteristics, and side effect profiles. In 2024, Glycotope’s target discovery business was acquired by Pentixapharm AG.

The Problem

Tumor cells express unique carbohydrate structures — GlycoTargets — that are absent on healthy cells, representing a highly specific but largely unexploited class of therapeutic targets in oncology. Conventional antibody platforms lack the ability to selectively recognize and engage these tumor-specific glyco-epitopes, resulting in insufficient tumor specificity and therapeutic precision.

The Solution

Glycotope’s GlycoBody platform generates highly specific monoclonal antibodies against carbohydrate epitopes found only on tumor cells. With GlycoExpress®, we engineer antibody candidates with optimized glycosylation profiles suitable for development as naked antibodies, bispecifics, ADCs, cellular therapies, or fusion proteins. With over 200 GlycoTargets discovered, our platform provides a rich foundation for next-generation cancer immunotherapy — now being advanced within Pentixapharm.