ALX Oncology

ALX Oncology

ALX Oncology launched in 2015 under a license from Crystal Bioscience, leveraging a transgenic chicken platform to produce human antibodies — a technique that yielded the company's CD47-blocking fusion protein, evorpacept. Jaume Pons, previously a senior vice president at Rinat and Pfizer, became CEO at founding and has guided the firm from private rounds through a 2020 Nasdaq listing under the ticker ALXO. The company is headquartered in South San Francisco, operating as a publicly traded clinical-stage biopharmaceutical firm. ALX Oncology's strategy concentrates entirely on evorpacept (ALX148), a high-affinity SIRPα-Fc fusion protein designed to block the CD47 "don't eat me" signal on cancer cells. The firm is testing evorpacept in multiple Phase 1 and Phase 2 trials in combination with leading agents, including Roche's Herceptin for gastric cancer and Merck's Keytruda for head and neck squamous cell carcinoma. The pipeline covers advanced solid tumors and lymphoma, with a focus on patients who have failed prior lines of therapy. All operations remain centered on US clinical sites. As of mid-2023, ALX Oncology reported a cash position sufficient to fund operations into 2025, with no significant commercial revenue stream before a potential first approval. The team size is smaller than typical late-stage peers, operating with under 100 professionals. In September 2023: ALX Oncology presented updated Phase 2 data for evorpacept in combination with Herceptin, Cyramza, and paclitaxel for second-line gastric cancer at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) congress, showing a median overall survival of 14.2 months (per ESMO, 2023). The structural differentiator is ALX Oncology's therapeutic focus on blocking one immune checkpoint with a single engineered molecule, a bet-the-company approach that avoids the fragmentation of larger oncology pipelines. This concentrated model aligns R&D spending with a single binary readout across multiple indications, and the firm's fusion protein design aims to reduce the hematologic toxicity seen in competing anti-CD47 antibody programs. Governance ladders up through a board that includes representatives from venBio and other early institutional backers.