The new drug candidate retrieved from the Mariana Trench delivers better efficacy at the dose of 30mg/kg than the 300mg/kg dose of first-line drugs. The Zhejiang University team aims to enter the IBD treatment sector with its "one-tenth dosage" edge.
Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) is a class of chronic autoimmune disorders affecting the intestinal tract, covering ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease, with more than 10 million patients worldwide, and the number of affected patients in China has continued to rise in recent years. Current treatment options are mainly aminosalicylic acid preparations, immunosuppressants and biological agents, but some patients have limited response rates, high recurrence rates, and obvious side effects associated with long-term use. The clinical demand for new, safe and highly effective small-molecule drugs has long been unmet.
The team led by Professor MA Zhongjun from the Ocean College of Zhejiang University has screened and obtained a new marine natural compound THK01 from deep-sea microorganisms. This compound has a unique anti-inflammatory activity mechanism, and new drug development is carried out for the IBD treatment direction. The project has completed repeated verification of preclinical efficacy, and the team is cooperating with the enterprise clinical team to promote subsequent development, and seeking a new round of financing.
Candidate drug screened from the 10,000-meter deep-sea strain bank
The origin of THK01 can be traced back to the Mariana Trench. The 10,000-meter hydrothermal sampler independently developed by the engineering team of the Ocean College of Zhejiang University has completed 10,000-meter seabed sampling with the Fendouzhe deep submersible, bringing back more than 30,000 microbial samples from the deep sea. The team isolated thousands of compounds from them and built a unique marine compound library. THK01 is derived from the metabolites of marine actinomycetes among them, belonging to marine natural products with novel structures.
Marine actinomycetes live in extreme environments with high salinity, high pressure, low temperature and darkness, and their metabolites often have structural novelty and biological activity that are incomparable to terrestrial microorganisms. According to a 2026 report by Zhejiang Daily, after four years of research and development, MA Zhongjun's team locked the marine compound that has a specific reaction with the pathogenic target from the compound library, and confirmed that it can exert anti-inflammatory effect by inhibiting the function of key pathogenic proteins.
In the preclinical efficacy verification, THK01 showed a significant dose advantage in the IBD mouse model: the therapeutic effect at a dose of 30mg/kg is better than that of the first-line clinical drug at 300mg/kg, and the dose is only one-tenth of the control drug, reflecting the characteristics of a candidate drug with small dose and high efficiency. At the same time, the team also found that THK01 also has therapeutic potential in animal models of pulmonary fibrosis, indicating that its anti-inflammatory mechanism may have a broader application prospect.
AI-assisted structure optimization accelerates candidate molecule iteration
In the compound optimization process, the team introduced artificial intelligence-assisted methods. In 2026, the structural optimization of the marine natural product THK01 assisted by artificial intelligence and its anti-IBD drug development, presided over by MA Zhongjun, was listed as a municipal key scientific and technological breakthrough project (in the field of college-enterprise cooperation) by the Zhoushan Municipal Bureau of Science and Technology, marking that the molecular structure optimization of THK01 has officially entered a systematic stage.
MA Zhongjun's team has systematic accumulation in the field of medicinal chemistry. According to public academic information, the team published the research results of selective HDAC8 inhibitors derived from marine microorganisms on *Journal of Medicinal Chemistry*, the top international journal of medicinal chemistry. The obtained compounds have an inhibitory activity of 0.12 nanomolar level, a subtype selectivity of more than 445 times, and the in vivo anti-tumor activity was verified in breast cancer animal models. This research paradigm of starting from deep-sea microbial metabolites and obtaining high-activity and high-selectivity candidate molecules through structural optimization provides methodological support for the subsequent iteration of THK01.
In September 2026, MA Zhongjun was invited to attend the 3rd AIM 2026 Autoimmune Drug Deep Focus Forum, and shared the R&D potential of marine drugs in the treatment of autoimmune diseases with experts from Roche, Highlight Pharma, BioMice, Salubris and other enterprises, and the project began to enter the vision of the industry.
Policy window and financing needs
The early R&D funds of the THK01 project mainly come from the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Zhejiang Province Leading Wild Goose Project and enterprise topics, with a total investment of more than 5 million yuan. According to MA Zhongjun's disclosure at the 2026 Ministry of Natural Resources Marine Industry Investment and Financing Roadshow, the team plans to launch clinical trials in cooperation with the enterprise clinical team this year. The capital demand in the clinical stage will jump from the ten-million level to the hundred-million level, and social capital cooperation must be introduced.
The policy environment is opening a window for the development of new marine drugs. In 2025, the added value of China's marine drug and functional product industry reached 99.6 billion yuan, and the national goal is to exceed 130 billion yuan by 2030 and strive for a number of innovative drugs to be launched. In May 2026, China's first policy document supporting the marine biomedicine industry was issued. Zhejiang Province released the industrial development guidelines for marine drugs and biological products in the same period, supporting the construction of the whole chain from deep-sea resource acquisition to drug output.
From the market perspective, China's IBD patient group is large and on the rise. The annual treatment cost of existing biological agents usually ranges from tens of thousands to more than 100,000 yuan, and the economic burden of long-term medication for patients is heavy. If THK01 can be advanced to clinical stage and launched on the market in the follow-up, its small-molecule oral administration method and first-mover advantage derived from deep sea are expected to provide new treatment options for patients.
The team is promoting a new round of financing, planning to release about 20% of equity to introduce industrial capital, which will be used to promote clinical trials of THK01, optimize molecular structure and carry out industrial layout. At the key node where new marine drugs move from the laboratory to industrialization, teams with deep-sea drug source reserves and AI-assisted R&D capabilities are gaining more and more attention.