PMB298 (Candidate discovery) :
The 3^rd generation immunotherapy

Third-generation cancer immunotherapy refers to the attempts targeting simultaneously immune checkpoints and the tumor immune microenvironment, with the goal of efficiently suppressing multiple aspects of negative immune regulation during immunotherapies.
Our third-generation immunotherapy is a small molecule designed to simultaneously inhibit two proteins that suppress anti-cancer immunity and generate immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment, respectively.
Therefore, the resulting candidates are expected to demonstrate the ability to enhance anticancer immunity and reprogram the immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment.

In fact, the lead compound in this project has shown efficacy in animal studies by activating CD8+T cells while suppressing Treg cells. As a result, it showed a higher CD8+T-cell/Treg-cell ratio than the anti-PD-L1 antibody.