Cancer is the uncontrolled growth of abnormal cells in the body. There is a large and growing body of literature that implicates galectins in a variety of pathogenic mechanisms of cancer. Galectin proteins, particularly galectin-1 and galectin-3, have been shown to be highly expressed in the majority of cancerous cells and have multiple roles in promoting cancer progression, including tumor cell invasion, metastasis, angiogenesis and tumor evasion of the immune system.
Galectin Therapeutics believes there is the potential for galectin inhibition to play an important role in cancer therapy, particularly tumor immunotherapy where our drug candidates may provide a new and complimentary approach to other drugs on the market for the treatment of cancer. Learn more about the galectin effect in immunotherapy.