Recently, Professor Li Minyong's team from the School of Pharmaceutical Sciences and Professor Ma Chunhong's team from the School of Basic Medical Sciences jointly contributed a research paper entitled "Photophosphatidylserine guides natural killer cell photoimmunotherapy via Tim-3" to the Journal of the American Chemical Society (JCR Q1, IF=15.419). Yang Xingye, doctoral student from the School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, and Li Mengzhen, doctoral student from the School of Basic Medical Sciences, are the co-first authors. Li Minyong, professor from the School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, and Ma Chunhong, professor from the School of Basic Medical Sciences are the co-corresponding authors. Shandong University is the first author institute and the sole corresponding author institute.

Immune-related adverse events can affect any organ system and have inflammatory side effects that cause intestinal inflammation, cystitis, and hepatitis. The pathogenesis of underlying immune-related adverse events is unknown. However, it is likely that they are related to imbalanced immunologic homeostasis. Immune checkpoints are crucial to preventing excessive immunopathology and autoimmunity. These checkpoints frequently suppress the overactivation of the immune system and are therefore the focus of many new immune interventions and adjustable immunotherapies. As a well-known immune checkpoint, T-cell immunoglobulin and mucin domain containing protein-3 (Tim-3) is widely expressed in a variety of immune cells, affecting both innate and adaptive immune responses, as well as influencing the occurrence and development of inflammation-related diseases. Preclinical studies suggested that Tim-3 is a potential target for immune cell-based therapy. To understand the precise role of Tim-3 in the immune system, and its potential as a therapeutic checkpoint blockade target in NK-cell-mediated diseases, the research developed a photoswitchable ligand phoPS that can be applied to precisely the functions of NK cells at different wavelengths of light. The research provides a new method for exploring NK cell immunobiology, and phoPS will be a useful tool for elucidating the role of Tim-3 in vitro and in vivo.

Professor Li Minyong's team has achieved a series of important achievements in the fields of photopharmacological treatment and biological activity visualization. The works of Li's team has been published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, Cell Chemical Biology, Acta Pharmaceutica Sinica B, Analytical Chemistry and other internationally renowned journals. The research has been supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Taishan Scholar Program at Shandong Province, the Qilu Scholar Program at Shandong University, the Shandong Natural Science Foundation, and the Collaborative Innovation Centre of Technology and Equipment for Biological Diagnosis and Therapy in Universities of Shandong.

Link to the article: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/jacs.1c11498