Programmed cell death protein-1 (PD-1) / programmed cell death ligand-1 (PD-L1) has been considered to be one of the most promising targets for tumor immunotherapy. At present, both monoclonal antibody drugs and small molecule inhibitors targeting PD-1/PD-L1 are facing bottlenecks. Numerous researchers have tried to explore different strategies to block the PD-L1/PD-L1 pathway, hoping to improve the effects of tumor immunotherapy. This review focuses on the degraders, bifunctional molecules and covalent inhibitors that target PD-L1, aiming to provide inspiring insights for the development of anti-PD-1/PD-L1 drugs.

Upon monitoring cytoplasmic aberrant double-stranded DNA, cGAS-STING signaling pathway induces the expression of type I interferons and pro-inflammatory cytokines, which activates the host immune response and enhances anti-tumor immune response and resistance to pathogen infection. However, sustained activation of the cGAS-STING signaling pathway drives diseases such as autoimmune diseases, aging-associated inflammation, and neurodegenerative pathologies. Herein, we describe the mechanism by which cGAS-STING signaling pathway participates in regulating the development of various immune-related diseases, with a particular review of the research and development progress of STING agonists, cGAS inhibitors, and STING inhibitors, aiming to provide some theoretical reference for the future development of cGAS-STING modulators.

As potential immunomodulators, platinum-based drugs could trigger immunogenic cell death (ICD). Hence, combination of platinum-based chemotherapy and immunotherapy could have better synergistic anticancer effect. Pt(II)-based drugs are the most common chemotherapeutic agents in cancer treatment yet with limited clinical application due to their toxic side-effects and drug resistance. Pt(IV) complexes have been widely investigated in the past decades due to their kinetic inertness and unique mechanisms . This article summarizes the progress in the pharmacological activities and mechanisms of Pt(IV) antitumor complexes via introducing different immunomodulators into chemotherapeutic agents in literature over recent years and highlights the potential targets and molecular signaling pathways so as to provide some reference for further development and potential clinical application of platinum-based chemo-immunotherapeutic agents.

C-C motif chemokine ligand 2 (CCL2) and its receptor CCR2 are closely related to tumorigenesis and tumor progression. The CCL2/CCR2 signaling axis promotes tumor progression through multiple mechanisms: CCL2 binds to CCR2 on the surface of tumor cells, and thus promotes tumor growth/survival and metastasis; more importantly, CCL2 recruits a variety of immunosuppressive cells to aggregate in the tumor microenvironment, and inhibits the function and activity of immune cells, promoting tumor progression. The article reviews the CCL2/CCR2 signaling axis and its role in tumors and tumor microenvironment, with particular focus on the advances in clinical research on drugs targeting CCL2/CCR2 signaling axis, in order to gain an in-depth and overall understanding of the mechanism of action of CCL2/CCR2 axis in tumor progression and develop more effective anti-tumor immunotherapeutic agents.

S-palmitoylation, a reversible and dynamic post-translational modification in cells, is involved in regulating the transcription and expression of downstream target genes as well as signal transduction, thereby affecting cell life activities. Studies have shown that thousands of human proteins undergo S-palmitoylation modification, suggesting that S-palmitoylation is closely related to the progression and treatment of diseases. T cells play central roles in anti-tumor immune responses. A variety of T cell immune-related proteins are regulated by S-palmitoylation. In the present study, we focus on the impact of S-palmitoylation on T cell signal transduction and its application in T cell immunotherapy, aiming to provide new ideas for the development of new targets and peptide inhibitors for T cell immunotherapy.

Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is a disease caused by abnormal cloning of hematopoietic stem cells in the bone marrow, which leads to accumulation of a large number of abnormally differentiated myeloid cells. It is difficult to cure by traditional treatment. The successful application of chimeric antigen receptor T cell (CAR-T) immunotherapy indicates that the treatment of hematological tumors has entered a new stage of precision immunotherapy. However, CAR-T immunotherapy has been found to have many problems in clinical applications, including long treatment cycle, expensive prices, off-target effects, cytokine release syndrome, etc. Therefore, it is necessary to expand the application of CAR or adopt improved measures to enhance the therapeutic effect. This article reviews the new strategies for genetic engineering modification of CAR immune cells and the research progress and application of in situ programming to generate CAR-T, and besides, briefly introduces the new methods about the delivery of gene drugs in vivo, aiming to provide new ideas and theoretical basis for expanding and improving the application of precision immunotherapy in AML.

Bruton’s tyrosine kinase (BTK), a cytoplasmic tyrosine kinase, plays a central role in the activation of B cells and granulocytes, operating downstream of B cell and Fcγ receptors, and is considered an attractive target for treating autoimmune diseases. Preclinical investigations have demonstrated that inhibition of BTK activity holds promise as a potential therapeutic strategy for inflammatory immune responses such as autoimmune diseases and allergies. This review provides an overview of the mechanisms by which BTK contributes to immune-related diseases and summarizes current research on the development of BTK inhibitors for treating these conditions, aiming to offer novel insights into non-oncology applications for BTK inhibitors.

In the present study, the compound XL-12 from our previous work was utilized as a lead compound. Through the optimization of the terminal phenyl ring, 12 target compounds were designed and synthesized. The structures of all target compounds were confirmed by ¹H NMR, ¹³C NMR, and H RMS. In vitro enzyme activity assay showed that most compounds demonstrated significant inhibitory activity toward Bruton’s tyrosine kinase (BTK) and Janus kinase 3 (JAK3). Among them, compound I-3 exhibited moderate cell proliferation inhibitory activity toward Daudi cells and BaF3-JAK3 cells. In the evaluation of anti-inflammatory activity in vitro, compound I-3 could effectively inhibit the production of inflammatory factors IL-6; besides, it exhibited superior anti-inflammatory activity compared to ibrutinib in xylene-induced ear swelling model in mice.

As a Th17 cell-specific transcription factor, retinoic acid receptor-related orphan receptor γt (RORγt), can induce differentiation of Th17 cells and production of inflammatory factor IL-17, playing an important role in inflammation and autoimmune diseases. RORγt inverse agonists have become a research hotspot in both academia and pharmaceutical companies around the world in recent years, with great development potential. A variety of skeletal structure types have been reported, including orthosteric and allosteric inverse agonists. In this paper, the structure and functions of RORγt are introduced, and RORγt inverse agonists in clinical and preclinical studies are reviewed in order to provide reference for further research and development of RORγt inverse agonists.

Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), whose pathogenesis remains elusive, is a group of autoimmune diseases characterized by chronic, progressive, and lifelong inflammation of the digestive tract. The pathogenesis of IBD remains elusive. Although a number of drugs have been developed to treat IBD, their effects are merely anti-inflammatory. In addition, current treatments for IBD are easily susceptible to resistance in clinical practice. Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) have been reported to have the ability to migrate to the site of inflammation, with potent immunoregulatory effects, and to rebalance the immune microenvironment and restore the integrity of the epithelial barrier with significant value of application, particularly for patients who are refractory to classic medicines. In this paper, we reviewed the clinical applications, mechanisms and engineerable properties of MSC products and their exosomes to provide some reference for the use of MSCs and their exosomes in the treatment of IBD.

The emerging infectious diseases have become an important risk factor affecting human public health. Vaccination remains the most critical approach to the prevention and control of such diseases. Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 epidemic, lots of transformational basic innovative vaccine technologies and strategies have been developed. The third-generation vaccine technology represented by mRNA vaccine has gradually become a new approach to the research and development of vaccines. This paper introduces the characteristics of different vaccine technologies in recent years, and summarizes the latest research progress in current vaccine products based on different platforms, so as to provide experience and reference for future research and development of vaccines.

mRNA vaccine delivers antigen-encoding mRNA into human cells, which translates into corresponding antigen proteins in cells, and induce effective immune responses. Compared with traditional vaccines, mRNA vaccines have good safety profile, short development cycle, and high immune efficacy, and can stimulate both cellular immune response and humoral immune response. With the development of nucleotide modification technology and delivery technology, mRNA vaccines also have broad application prospects. This paper reviews mRNA technology and its application in vaccines, in the hope of offering theoretical and practical insights to researchers engaged or to be engaged in the development of mRNA vaccines.

Heterologous boost COVID-19 vaccination can solved the problem of decreased efficacy caused by single dose of vaccine. Heterologous booster with adenoviral-vectored COVID-19 vaccine (Ad5-nCoV) following primary immunization with inactivated COVID-19 vaccines is a widely-used vaccination strategy in clinic, while different routes of Ad5-nCoV administration exist and pose a question which route could be more optimal. In this study, we comprehensively evaluated and compared the vaccine immunity induced in mice immunized according to three different vaccination regimens: “3×phosphate buffered solution(3× PBS)”, “2×inactivated vaccine + 1×inactivated vaccine (3×INA)”, “2×inactivated vaccine + 1×Ad5-nCoV (intramuscular)[2×INA+Ad5(im)]”and“2×inactivated vaccine + 1×Ad5-nCoV (intranasal)[2×INA+Ad5(in)]”. We found that heterologous booster with Ad5-nCoV, irrespective of the route of administration, induced significantly higher levels of anti-Spike IgG and subclasses (IgG1and IgG2c), Spike-specific T cells, class-switched Spike⁺ memory B cells (MBCs) than homologous booster with 3^rd dose of inactivated COVID-19 vaccine. Of note, compared with the intramuscular given, intranasal given of Ad5-nCoV as a booster dose clearly induced higher levels of serum and bronchoalveolar bavage fluid anti-spike immunoglobulin A, and moreover, induced stronger infiltration of major innate effector cells like neutrophils, natural killer cells and dendritic cells into the lung tissue, which suggested that mucosal vaccine responses are generated upon intranasal booster with Ad5-nCoV. Altogether, our study analyzed the vaccine immunity induced by different COVID-19 vaccines administered using different regimens, which may guide the clinical use of other types of prophylactic vaccines aiming to mount improved vaccine responses.