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Targenics was founded by John Mumm, Martin Oft and Chi-Hui Tang. It's mission was to further clinically develop the PEGylated IL-10 molecule for Immunoncology. John had originally discovered the CD8+ T cell stimulatory function using CD8+ T cells derived from human melanoma explants while at MD Anderson and took a postdoctoral position at
DNAX/Schering Plough Research Institute (SPRI) with Martin to further explore the MOA of IL-10 preclinically. SPRI, due to the history of IL-10 development at Schering Plough, the PEGylated form of IL-10 was waiting in the freezer. Lingling Wu had conducted syngeneic murine tumor study with the 12kDa PEG-IL-10 and John took up the work from there. For 5 years the PEG-IL-10 program was explored and just after the merger of Merck and Schering Plough - put up for outlicensing. John and Martin seized upon the opportunity to start Targenics. John raised limited friends and family funds and together, Martin and John embarked on a road show to raise Series A funds. Given the pleiotropic biology of IL-10 - it took a year until MediVentures provided a term sheet. This term sheet and work that John and Martin had done piqued the interest of serial entrepreneur Peter Van Vlasselaer EIR with Beth Seidenberg at Kleiner Perkins. Beth provided a term sheet for the merger of Targenics with ARMO BioSciences with Peter as the CEO.
