TetraLogic Pharmaceuticals discovers and develops novel, targeted drugs to treat cancer. The company’s drug candidates regulate the apoptosis (programmed cell death) pathway. The role of apoptosis is to eliminate abnormal or obsolete cells from the body enabling them to be replaced by normal fully functional cells. When the apoptosis pathway is blocked, abnormal cells such as cancer cells survive and proliferate. TetraLogic’s founding scientists, Drs. George McLendon and Yigong Shi, at Princeton University, discovered TetraLogic’s core technology which enables drugs to be developed that will unblock the apoptosis pathway resulting in the killing of tumor cells.

TetraLogic scientists have produced drug candidates called IAP antagonists that unblock apoptosis and kill cancer cells. IAP antagonists target an inhibitor of apoptosis proteins including XIAP, cIAP-1 and 2 and ML-IAP. IAPs play a key role in enabling the survival of many types of cancer cells before, during and after treatment with chemotherapy or radiation therapy. As of October 2004, TetraLogic’s drug candidates have entered the preclinical development phase. The company’s most important goal is to enter its IAP antagonists drug candidates into human clinical trials.