Academia Sinica and National Health Research Institutes jointly present medical achievements and novel technologies

　Academia Sinica and National Health Research Institutes jointly held a presentation on July 13, 2017 to present seventeen new technologies in three major fields of “small molecule drugs”, “personalized medicine”, and “protein drugs”. 

　Academia Sinica has more than a decade experiences in technology transfer and development.  Among the new technologies introduced at this presentation, nine come from the R&D performances of Academia Sinica, all of which are top ones including the new therapies for cancer, Alzheimer's disease, other neurodegenerative diseases and the developments of antimicrobial peptides. 

　In the domain of small molecule drugs, the “selective sialyltransferase inhibitor”, jointly developed by the team led by LI, Wen-Shan of the Institute of Chemistry, Academia Sinica and the National Institute of Cancer Research of National Health Research Institutes, is able to effectively inhibit tumor growth and cancer metastasis and also provide a therapy alternative to the cancer patients with “sialyated N-linked glycoproteins” proliferation. 

　In the aspect of personalized medicine, the “OptoP: a pioneering high content cell image-registered protein labeling system defining precise protein identification”, innovated by the team headed by LIAO, Jung-Chi of the Institute of Atomic and Molecular Sciences, Academia Sinica, stands for the first system capable of obtaining target protein through cell imaging as location blueprint and the high flux and high precision light-directed labeling so as to conduct protein composition analysis and to effectively save experiment time. 

　As to protein drugs, LU, Joyce Jean’s team from the Genomics Research Center of the Academia Sinica pioneers in creating the method for making mesenchymal stem cells by human differentiated somatic cells, which method takes only six days to fulfill a 70% turnover rate with medication, ultimately solving the clinical difficulty in obtaining mesenchymal stem cells and in their limited number and further providing an efficient and safer cell therapy method to be applied to tissue engineering and regenerative medicine. 

　The National Health Research Institutes is not outshined by the Academia Sinica by their outstanding performance of the novel drug DBPR211.  DBPR211 potentially serves as an antagonist for type 2 diabetes, obesity, and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, a new therapeutic alternative to patients with diabetes and also a new combination for curing diabetic complications.  In addition, DBPR116 has strong anti-pain effects brought by opiate receptor through special mechanism but without the side effects of morphine based drugs and therefore is comparatively safer.  (July 2017) 
/CCS