Medicines in the making

BCL6 is a naturally occurring protein that some lymphoma cells exploit to turn off genes that could get in the way of their mutating, proliferating and surviving as cancer cells. We designed TLN-121 to remove BCL6 from the cell while avoiding other targets that could cause toxicity. We believe this drug design choice will give TLN-121 the best chance at being used in combination with other medicines useful in the treatment of lymphoma.

EZH2 is a naturally occurring protein that helps cells regulate which genes are translated into proteins. It is overexpressed and even mutated in many cancers. We in-licensed TLN-254 from Jiangsu Hengrui Pharmaceuticals for territories outside China, where the medicine (SHR2554) holds conditional approval for the treatment of patients with relapsed or refractory peripheral T-cell lymphoma who have received at least one prior line of systemic therapy. We believe EZH2 inhibitors are an under-explored drug class that could have additional uses in making other anti-cancer medicines better.

Approximately 1 in 4 adult cancers harbors an alteration in the KRAS protein. There are FDA-approved medicines for G12C cancers, a subset of KRAS tumors, but other subsets have no targeted treatments. Our chemists went “back to basics” to innovate rather than follow, producing a compound that promises to provide deep and constant pan-KRAS target inhibition.