Delivering innate immune agonists specifically to the right tissue, for the right duration, at the right dose to fight cancer and infectious disease.
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Apros Therapeutics is a drug discovery and development company focused on tissue-targeted small molecule innate immune agonists to increase tumor immunogenicity – turning cold tumors hot. We do this utilizing novel chemistry approaches to precisely target the agonist to certain tumors/tissues with little to no systemic distribution.
TLR agonist have the potential to turn immunologically cold tumors into hot tumors by increasing tumor antigenicity and promoting inflammation within the tumor microenvironment. Combining TLR agonists with checkpoint inhibitors provides complementary mechanisms to boost the tumor immunity cycle and to improve the response of current cancer immune therapies.
Antigen
Processing
& Presentation
Priming & Activation
T Cell Infiltration
Tumor Recognition
Tumor Killing
Antigen Release
Local activation of toll-like receptors affords effective immune priming with minimal systemic inflammation, which is predicted to uncouple efficacy from toxicity. Akin to vaccines, localized innate immune priming leads to systemic adaptive immunity (antibodies and T-cells) against cancer or viral antigens.
Our chemistry-based platform aims to widen the therapeutic window of TLR7 agonists by achieving localized innate immune activation using methods that overcome the limitations of intratumoral injections.
GMP Material Available for Collaboration
Dr. Sheng Ding is currently the Dean and Bayer Distinguished Professor in the School of Pharmaceutical Sciences at Tsinghua University. He is also the founding Institute Director of Global Health Drug Discovery Institute in Beijing, a joint venture by Tsinghua University and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Dr. Ding also holds a joint appointment as William K. Bowes, Jr. Distinguished Investigator at the Gladstone Institutes, and Professor at Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, University of California San Francisco. He obtained his B.S. in chemistry with honors from Caltech in 1999, and a Ph.D. in chemistry from The Scripps Research Institute in 2003. Before moving to back to China, Ding was an Assistant Professor and then Associate Professor of Chemistry at Scripps from 2003 to 2011, and then Senior Investigator/Professor at Gladstone/UCSF from 2011 to 2016. Dr. Ding has pioneered on developing and applying innovative chemical approaches to stem cell biology and regeneration, with a focus on discovering and characterizing novel small molecules that can control various cell fate/function, including stem cell maintenance, activation, differentiation and reprogramming in various developmental stages and tissues. Ding has published over 150 research articles, reviews and book chapters, and made several seminal contributions to the stem cell field and drug discovery. Ding is a cofounder of several biotechnology companies.
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