About the Authors

Norio Miyamura

Roles Data curation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

Affiliation Department of Surgery, Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York, New York, United States of America

Chisato M. Yamazaki

Roles Investigation

Affiliation Texas Therapeutics Institute, The Brown Foundation Institute of Molecular Medicine, McGovern Medical School, The University of Texas Health Center at Houston, Houston, Texas, United States of America

Yasuaki Anami

Roles Investigation

Affiliation Texas Therapeutics Institute, The Brown Foundation Institute of Molecular Medicine, McGovern Medical School, The University of Texas Health Center at Houston, Houston, Texas, United States of America

Kyoji Tsuchikama

Roles Supervision, Writing – review & editing

kyoji.tsuchikama@uth.tmc.edu (KT); ks3120@cumc.columbia.edu (KNS)

Affiliation Texas Therapeutics Institute, The Brown Foundation Institute of Molecular Medicine, McGovern Medical School, The University of Texas Health Center at Houston, Houston, Texas, United States of America

Kazuki N. Sugahara

Roles Funding acquisition, Project administration, Supervision, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

kyoji.tsuchikama@uth.tmc.edu (KT); ks3120@cumc.columbia.edu (KNS)

Affiliation Department of Surgery, Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York, New York, United States of America

Competing Interests

“K.N.S. is a co-founder of Cend Therapeutics, Inc (now Lisata Therapeutics, Inc), and has ownership interest in the company. K.N.S. is an inventor on a patent application relevant to this article (WO2009126349). C.M.Y., Y.A. and K.T. are named inventors on the patent applications (WO2018218004A1, US11629122B2, EP3630189A4 and WO2023122587A3) relating to the linker technologies described in this article. K.T. is a co-founder of and holds equity in CrossBridge Bio. This does not alter our adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials. N.M. has no competing interests to declare.” WO2009126349: Methods and compositions related to internalizing RGD peptides WO2018218004A1: Linkers for antibody drug conjugates US11629122B2: Linkers for antibody drug conjugates EP3630189A4: Linker for antibody medicinal conjugates WO2023122587A3: Tripeptide linkers and methods of use thereof.