• Jason Lih, PhD, VP of Research and Development. Previously the National Cancer Institute, AbbVie, Exelixis, Sana Biotechnology. • Kan V. Lu, PhD, Sr. Director of Biology. Previously Pharmacyclics, an AbbVie company. Nature co - author. • Michihisa Umetani, PhD, Director. Previously the University of Houston faculty. Nature co - author. Board of Directors • Li - Fen Lee, PhD, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Apeximmune • David Yu, JD, Chief Technology Officer, Dexter Networks • Hsieng Lu, PhD, protein characterization and CMC. Previously Senior Director, Amgen Biologics • Lih - Ling Lin, PhD, Chief Scientific Officer, PharmaEssentia • Ling L ing Liu, DCI Partners • Wei Fan Chen, DCI Partners • Zunlun Wang, CEO and Founder, Stealth startup, Previously CSO RemeGen Scientific Advisory Board • Jenny Ting, PhD, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Past President, American Association of Immunologists. • Dario Vignali , PhD, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. Led foundational LAG - 3 work. • Lawrence Steinman, MD, Stanford University. Member, National Academy of Sciences and National Academy of Medicine. • Makoto Murakami, PhD, University of Tokyo. Pioneer of the secreted phospholipase A2 field and a co - author on the Nature paper. • Tony Ho, Chief Scientific Officer & Senior Science Partner, Pivotal Life Sciences. Former Head of R&D at CRISPR Therapeutics , and Head of Oncology Integration & Innovation at AstraZeneca. Breaking News at - a - G lance: S ept. 9, 2026. Researchers have found a molecule in the lymph nodes beside a tumor that disarms immune cells before they reach the cancer, a discovery that may explain why immunotherapy works in only 20% of patients and points toward a way to reach the other 80%. • Publication . Nature , Sept. 9, 2026: “ PLA2G2D in tumour - draining lymph nodes regulates anti - tumour immunity. ” DOI: 10.1038/s41586 - 026 - 10954 - 1 • Two paths, one target . Apeximmune applied a proprietary bioinformatics algorithm to more than 9,000 primary tumor samples from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA), surfacing 70 candidate novel immune checkpoints. PLA2G2D emerged as the top - ranked hit, well ahead of known checkpoints PD - 1 and C TLA - 4 in the same analysis. Erasmus University Medical Center (Erasmus MC) in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, working in parallel and unaware of Apeximmune's program, applied a spatial proteogenomic approach to melanoma patient samples from individuals who had divergent clinical outcomes, and independently identified PLA2G2D as a top hit in the dendritic cell and macrophage populations interacting with CD8+ T - cells in patients with worse outcomes . • A mechanism the field had overlooked . PLA2G2D has long been characterized for its phospholipase activity, and previous efforts to drug the broader sPLA2 family, including terminated late - stage small - molecule programs for inflammation from major pharmaceutical companies , had assumed its enzymatic function was central to its biology. Apeximmune