Business description of MACROGENICS-INC from last 10-k form

Except as otherwise indicated herein or as the context otherwise requires, references in this annual report on Form 10-K to “MacroGenics,” “the company,” “we,” “us” and “our” refer to MacroGenics, Inc. and its consolidated subsidiaries. DART^®, the phrase “Breakthrough Biologics, Life-Changing Medicines” and the MacroGenics logo are our registered trademarks. The other trademarks, trade names and service marks appearing in this report are the property of their respective owners.

Overview

We are a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on discovering and developing innovative monoclonal antibody-based therapeutics for the treatment of cancer and autoimmune diseases. We generate our pipeline of product candidates from our proprietary suite of next-generation antibody technology platforms, which we believe improve the performance of monoclonal antibodies and antibody-derived molecules. These product candidates, which we have identified through our understanding of disease biology and immune-mediated mechanisms, may address disease-specific challenges which are not currently being met by existing therapies. Some of these product candidates include therapeutics in the emerging field of immune oncology and are designed to promote tumor destruction by either enhancing or restoring the body’s immune system to destroy cancers. We create both differentiated molecules that are directed to novel cancer targets, as well as “bio-betters,” which are drugs designed to improve upon marketed medicines. The combination of our technology platforms and antibody engineering expertise has allowed us to generate promising product candidates and enter into several strategic collaborations with global pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies. These collaborations provide us with funding and allow us to leverage the additional expertise of these collaborators to advance the development of our product candidates.

We have three versatile, proprietary technology platforms consisting of: (1) our Dual Affinity Re-Targeting (“DART”) platform, which enables the targeting of multiple antigens or cells by using a single molecule with an antibody-like structure, and also includes the ability to recruit any T cell in a patient’s body to destroy targeted cancer cells; (2) our Fc Optimization platform, which enhances the body’s immune system to mediate the killing of cancer cells through a mechanism called antibody-dependent cellular cytotoxicity (“ADCC”) in which antibodies and immune cells cooperate to destroy targets such as tumor cells; and (3) our Cancer Stem-like Cell (“CSLC”) platform, which provides a unique discovery tool to identify cancer targets shared both by tumor-initiating cells and the differentiated cancer cells derived from them. These versatile technology platforms can be applied in combination with one another to custom-design an antibody or antibody-derived molecule that is optimized to treat a specific disease.

Antibodies, which are proteins produced by specialized cells of the body’s immune system usually in response to foreign substances, such as bacteria and viruses, or to cancer cells, serve as the primary resource for our product candidates. Many of our cancer product candidates are derived from our library of over 2,000 purified antibodies. Our antibodies are targeted to more than 70 different antigens, or components of the foreign substance that induce the production of antibodies, expressed on the surface of cancer cells. In addition, we continue to generate new antibodies for our library using our proprietary CSLC lines and soluble protein antigens.

We initially select a specific antibody based on its functional properties related to a disease target as well as its distribution on tissues in the body. We then utilize one or more of our technology platforms for engineering and optimizing our product candidate. We believe our approach allows us to take advantage of the enhanced properties of an engineered antibody or antibody-derived molecule to kill cancer cells and to interfere with autoimmune diseases more effectively than a wild type, or non-engineered, monoclonal antibody. Our methods for improving the effectiveness of antibodies include the following: enhancing the body’s immune system, targeting multiple antigens on the surface of the same target cell, increasing the strength of the binding of an antibody to its antigen targets, and reducing the likelihood of an unwanted immune response to the antibody or

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