[Edaily Reporter YU JIN-HEE ] #PenetriumBio is accelerating development by recruiting a series of world-renowned scholars ahead of global clinical trials for “Penetrium,” a generative AI-based new anticancer drug candidate.

PenetriumBio announced on the 25th that Professor Gary S. Feuerstein, a world-renowned authority in the field of rheumatoid arthritis, will join the Penetrium clinical project.

Penetrium is the world’s first generative AI-based anticancer drug candidate designed to normalize the “diseased microenvironment” that fuels cancer. It marks the first instance of a full-scale clinical investigation into the “CIAAT & Soil” hypothesis proposed by Stephen Paget in 1889. As this hypothesis—which had remained purely theoretical for over 130 years—now takes center stage in clinical trials, it is drawing significant attention from the global cancer and autoimmune research communities.

Professor Firestein, who has recently joined the team, is the editor-in-chief of *Firestein & Kelley’s Textbook of Rheumatology*—the global standard textbook on rheumatology—and currently serves as a Distinguished Professor at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine. Having devoted his entire career to researching the tissue microenvironment, he is regarded as a pioneer in the study of pathological synovial tissue (pannus) that destroys joints.

According to the academic community, cancer and autoimmune diseases share the same root cause: a “diseased microenvironment.” It is reported that Professor Firestein decided to join Penitrium after personally reviewing the company’s preclinical data. In preclinical animal models, Penitrium demonstrated the ability to normalize both the tumor microenvironment and the pathological fibroblasts found in rheumatic pannus lesions. These cells are also the targets Professor Firestein has spent his entire career researching.

Jin Geun-woo, Co-CEO of PenetriumBio, explained, “It is very encouraging that two world-renowned authorities in different disease fields have converged on the same mechanism of action for the same drug,” adding, “We plan to form a ‘Tumor and Autoimmune Microenvironment Advisory Committee’ centered on this mechanism, with the participation of a large number of global scholars, including Professor Firestone.”

PenetriumBio plans to submit an Investigational New Drug (IND) application for a Phase 2 clinical trial in solid tumors to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) this July. Professor Sandip Patel, a leading expert in lung cancer who previously joined the company and served as co-chair of the “2024 World Conference on Lung Cancer (WCLC),” is scheduled to officially present Penitrium’s research findings on solid tumors at “WCLC 2026,” to be held in Seoul this September.

Jo Won-dong, Chairman of PenetriumBio, emphasized, “The innovation of the microenvironment-targeted mechanism derived from generative AI is what brought these world-renowned experts together,” adding, “Together with our established lineup of global experts, we will successfully lead the U.S. clinical trial scheduled for this July.”