Cover Stories
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DSG2 Controls Breast Cancer Metastasis
Breast cancer has been the most common cancer in women worldwide. Even though early detection and therapeutic strategies have made breast cancer less life-threatening and increased the 5-year survival rate to more than 90%, the survival rate is still only 30% for later stage breast cancers that have metastasized. Therefore, better knowledge of how breast cancers spread to other parts of the boy is a key factor to improve survival.
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Repurposing Existing Medicines as Anti-COVID-19 Virus Agents
SARS-CoV-2 definitely dominates the worldwide attention in year 2020, the pandemic has taken more human lives than many other major historical pandemics, and it does not have a sign to be under control yet.
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Achievements of The Summit Translational Program (2006-2020)
Since outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in 2003, our society recognized the need to establish translational biomedical research for emerging infectious diseases and other major diseases in Taiwan. Dr. Chi-Huey Wong was invited in 2003 by Former President Yuan-Tseh Lee of Academia Sinica (AS) as the founding Director of Genomic Research Center, and in 2005 he was assigned to organize the Summit Translational Program focusing on the translational research of the major diseases (including cancer, infectious diseases, and neurodegenerative diseases) and regenerative medicine in order to facilitate the development of new therapeutics and diagnostics. As the Program started in 2006, Dr. Wong invited several outstanding experts in the fields of clinical medicine, drug discoveries, and virus research to join. In the past 15 years, there are over 110 researchers and 90 labs of 11 institutes in AS and 8 departments in domestic universities/hospitals participating in this Program.
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Curbing TDP-43 May Ease the Alzheimer’s Disease Progression
Neurodegenerative diseases are making more impacts socially and economically as human life expectancy gets higher and higher. The scientific world still doesn’t have many clues regarding these diseases. Dr. Yun-Ru (Ruby) Chen’s research has been circled around the protein TDP-43 and its role in several neurodegenerative diseases, in a paper published in the journal Nature Communications, they have reported a new insight into how TDP-43 is affecting Alzheimer’s disease.
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Monoglycosylated Chimeric Hemagglutinin as Universal Flu Vaccine
Professor Chi-Huey Wong had previously led a group thinking from outside of the box and created a mono-glycan H1N1 flu vaccine that proved effective against multiple flu subtypes. They have outdone themselves again, and this time, they came up with a breakthrough development of a universal anti-influenza vaccine using a designed chimeric hemagglutinin (HA) protein. The resulting immune re-sponses in animal model showed coverages not only on various human influenza strains and subtypes, but also the emerging avian flu. They have published the result online in PNAS on July 15th.
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FRIL Can Grab the Thorny Crown to Fight Off COVID-19
A group of GRC investigators who have put in extensive effort in the study of infectious diseases, glycoproteins, and herbal medicines have collaborated to come up with an easy but effective way to fight off not only most types of influenza viruses, but also the dreaded Covid-19 coronavirus. This study, led by Professor Alex Ma, recently published their findings in the journal Cell Reports.
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A Portable Mass Spectrometer that Writes History
Computer downsizing from mainframes, mini, micro, until now the hand held devices, it happened one after another one so fast yet made major impact to human history. Now, the same kind of evolution may happen again to Mass Spectrometers.
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A Promising Trisaccharide Identified for Damaged Cartilage
“Bad Knees” is not an unfamiliar topic among older folks. Most of the complaints are pains and swellings, accompanying clicking and locking at the joints. Some people believe it’s a sign of ageing when one starts feeling funny at the knees. And it may just be true!
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The Circles: Establishment of Autism-associated Circular RNA Regulatory Networks
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a pervasive neurodevelopmental and heritable complex disorder characterized by limited social communication, restricted and ritualized interests, and repetitive behavior [Mendelian Inheritance in Man (MIM) 209850].
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Novel Nanomaterial Makes Targeted Lung Cancer Cells Evincible On Living Mice
Molecularly targeted therapy can provide cancer patients with treatments targeting cancerous cells and avoid unnecessary damages to non-cancer cells. However, it is a challenge to deliver the drug to just where the cancerous cells are located. When the drug is distributed to our body, the ultimate goal is to not let it go circulated throughout the body, for the sake of efficiency as well as safety. There is another thera-peutic challenge, which is to detect the metastasis as early as possible.
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A Covid-19 Antigen Rapid Test Kit Delivered
Today, Academia Sinica (AS) proudly announced that the first ever monoclonal antibody specifically binding nucleocapsid protein (N protein) of the coronavirus has been successfully generated and tested, a work done by Dr. An-Suei Yang and his team at Genome Research Center in AS. If successfully developed and manufactured, the rapid immune based test kit could prove very useful in detecting coronavirus within 20 minutes just like a rapid influenza test.
