Shanghai Medicilon Inc.

  Being attached to the extracellular matrix (ECM) provides cells with numerous advantages for survival, for instance, receiving much needed growth stimuli. However, for malignant cells to function, they must overcome their anchorage-dependent growth—a scenario that is associated with increased production of reactive oxygen species (ROS) and altered glucose metabolism.       Scientists at the Children’s Medical Center Research Institute at UT Southwestern (CRI) have identified a novel metabolic pathway that helps cancer cells thrive in conditions that are lethal to normal cells.       “It’s long been thought that if we could target tumor-specific metabolic pathways, it could lead to effective ways to treat cancer,” explained senior study author Ralph DeBerardinis, M.D., Ph.D.,  associate professor, and director of CRI’s Genetic and  Metabolic Disease Program . “This study finds that two very different metabolic processes a...

  SAPA-DC 2017 Annual Scientific Seminar came to an end in Rockville, Maryland, USA on April 1, 2017. During the meeting, Dr. Wang Jun, VP of Medicilon’s biology department, gave his speech on the “ Animal Models  in  Drug Discovery  on Immunotherapy at Medicilon”. He shared the latest developments of  tumor animal model  and part of technical data of Medicilon. The conference gathered in the field of scientific research, clinical practice of medicine and policy supervision and other fields of experts and scholars on the scene of the most cutting-edge cancer immunotherapy.  The 200 experts and scholars travelled from Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and China’s domestic pharmaceutical industry. As an important business partner of the seminar, Dr. Wang Jun said, “It is a great honor to be able to introduce Medicilon’s entire animal model library, including the tumor animal model to the world’s regional pharmaceutical industry counterparts. Medicilon a...

   It’s an appealing idea: Eliminate the cells that support a tumor, and maybe the tumor will, in a manner of speaking, come tumbling down. But what if the tumor remains standing? Even worse, what if the tumor is soon accompanied by spreading metastasis?     Such unexpected developments were in fact observed in a study conducted by researchers based at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH). According to these researchers, the consequences of inducing the self-destruction of tumor-support cells crucially depend on timing.     Tumor support cells, or cancer-associated fibroblasts (CAFs), may be engineered to carry so-called suicide genes. Because the genes can be activated by means of a small molecule inducer, they can be triggered at will. Such control is enormously convenient in cancer research. For example, it can enable researchers to eliminate CAFs at defined moments in tumor progression.     Selectively orchestrati...

  Scientists in the U.S. have found that a dietary supplement added to sports drinks can effectively reduce the growth of human drug-resistant HER2-positive   breast cancer tumors in mice . The studies, headed by Mayo Clinic Pharmacologist Taro Hitosugi, Ph.D., found that the supplement, cyclocreatine targets mitochondrial creatine kinase 1 (MtCK1), which is involved in a mitochondrial metabolic pathway that is upregulated in HER2-positive breast tumors. Tumor proliferation was reduced in cyclocreatine-treated mice with human trastuzumab-resistant HER2+ xenografts. Combining cyclocreatine with the HER2 kinase inhibitor lapatinib resulted in even greater antiproliferative effects in the  mouse xenograft models  than either treatment alone. “Mitochondrial creatine kinase 1 may be a new drug target for the treatment of HER2 positive breast cancer,” says Matthew Goetz, M.D., director of the Mayo Clinic Breast Cancer research program, and co-author of the team’s published...