You don’t usually see a clinical-stage company put three drugs against the same target into the clinic.
Pipeline diversification is kind of the entire point of having a platform tech.
But Janux Therapeutics is doing exactly that with PSMA, the prostate cancer antigen, and they just took another step forward.
This week the company dosed the first patient in a Phase 1 trial of JANX014, a double-masked PSMA-targeted T cell engager for metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer. JANX014 is the second clinical-stage asset in their PSMA portfolio.
The lead, JANX007, is in Phase 1b expansion. A third asset, JANX013 (a PSMA-targeted CD28 co-stimulatory engager called a TRACIr), is expected to enter the clinic in the back half of 2026.
Three shots on goal at the same target.
Janux PSMA pipeline (mCRPC)
JANX007 — PSMA-TRACTr
Bispecific TCE · Lead asset, Phase 1b expansion
JANX014 — Double-masked PSMA-TCE
Bispecific TCE · First patient dosed today
JANX013 — PSMA-TRACIr
CD28 co-stim engager · Clinic expected H2 2026
The strategy makes more sense when you look at JANX007’s data. Phase 1a topline (December 2024) reported 100% PSA50 response in 16 pre-Pluvicto patients, with 63% getting to PSA90 and 31% getting to PSA99. Those numbers got the market’s attention. They also raised the obvious question: what happens if JANX007 has a problem in expansion?
The answer is now JANX014.
The “double-masked” design adds a second cleavable peptide mask to the molecule, on top of the standard masking that defines Janux’s TRACTr platform. The masks stay closed in circulation and only get cleaved by tumor-specific proteases when the molecule reaches the tumor microenvironment.
The idea is to widen the therapeutic index even further than JANX007 already does.
The Biotech Voyager
Early-stage biotech signals, personalized.
The signals that matter to you, contextualized and written directly to you, so you cut through the noise and immediately understand why it matters.
JANX013 takes the strategy in a different direction. Instead of recruiting cytotoxic T cells via CD3, it engages CD28 to provide co-stimulation, a second signal that helps T cells stay activated and proliferate.
The thinking is that CD3 engagement plus CD28 engagement might produce more durable responses than CD3 alone. Pair it with JANX007 and you potentially get longer-lasting tumor control without bumping up CRS risk.
Janux is sitting on $989 million in cash as of Q3 2025. Plenty of runway to push all three programs through dose escalation in parallel.
The competitive setup in PSMA is brutal right now. Novartis’s Pluvicto is the entrenched standard. POINT Biopharma (acquired by Lilly), Convergent Therapeutics, and Lantheus are all running PSMA radioligands.
Outside of radioligands, T cell engagers in PSMA include Amgen’s acapatamab (which had to dose-escalate carefully because of CRS) and Heidelberg Pharma’s programs. For more on how T cell engagers are evolving across targets, see the recent piece on Deck Bio’s multi-target intracellular TCE platform.
What sets Janux apart is the masking technology and the bench depth at a single target. If JANX007 hits in Phase 2, JANX014 and JANX013 become the second wave. If JANX007 stumbles, JANX014 picks up the baton.
That’s a luxury most biotechs don’t have.
