◉ Core technology

Figure 1: The core technology of medicine only biomedicine

Dr Wen-Chin Yang, Academia Sinica, published his seminal paper that discovered and identified a new therapeutic target of diabetes, Pdia4. Pdia4 is primarily expressed in beta cells. This expression can be up-regulated by excess nutrients or diabetes (EMM (2021) e11668).  Through the novel drug development strategy, the molecular docking platform was used to screen hundreds of compounds for Pdia4-specific hits, followed by lead identification and optimization. As a result, three drug candidates, including PS-001, were selected for pre-clinical and clinical studies (Figure 1). Our final goal is to obtain FDA-approved drugs for diabetes.

The details about the efficacy and mechanism of Pdia4 and its inhibitors are described in Figure 2.

Figure 2: Pdia4 negatively regulates pancreatic islet cell lesions. Under normal physiology, islet cells express a small amount of Pdia4 and generate a basal amount of ROS, and the number and function of islet cells are normal. Excessive nutrition (metabolic stress) can increase Pdia4, generate excess ROS, and cause islet cell failure and lead to the occurrence of diabetes. PS-001 inhibits Pdia4 activity and can inhibit ROS production, islet cell exhaustion and diabetes ( EMBO Mol. Med. (2021) e11668 ).