News
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Chemists restructure an old natural product: Discovery a highly specific Golgi α-mannosidase inhibitor as a new anticancer agent
Glycoproteins play important roles in all kinds of biological events. Enzymes that were anticipated in modulation of N-glycosylation processes are regarded as a potential therapeutic target because of the key role they play in glycosylation processes. But some are undruggable because they belong to families of related enzymes that share the very similar active sites, and targeting them can lead to severe side effects.
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PDAC tumor cell-fibroblast interactions promote metastasis via Homophilic ATP1A1 Binding
Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is responsible for more than 90% of pancreatic cancer cases, just 11% of PDAC patients live for at least five years after their diagnosis. It is seldom detected at its early stages when it's most curable.
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Excess sugar intake increases the risk of pancreatic tumorigenesis
About 1.02 billion hand-shaken drinks are sold every year in Taiwan, working out to over 30% of people consume at least one cup a day. Excess sugar's impact on obesity and diabetes is well known. Still, one area that may surprise many men is consuming sugar in excessive amounts may contribute to the in-creased risk of Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC).
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The critical point to treatment from the inside out: hybrid inorganic/organic nanoparticles with exosomes for cancer treatment
Since James E. Rothman, Randy W. Schekman, and Thomas C. Sudhof won the Nobel Prize in 2013 for revealing intracellular vesicles’ transport regulation mechanism, such as exosomes, which initially believed the primary function was only exosomes that transport cellular waste.
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Learning from nature: StnK3 is the epimerase controlling β-methyl amino acid stereochemistry
Natural products are a significant source of structurally diverse bioactive compounds for pharmaceutical, cosmetic, and food applications. Bioactive compounds often carry desired biological activities, such as anti-inflammation, anticancer, analgesics, and pain killing.
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Mono-GlcNAc-decorated spike vaccine is highly effective against COVID-19 variants
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has resulted in more than 440 million confirmed cases and over 6 million deaths so far. Although there are COVID-19 vaccines available, viruses constantly change through mutations. Key questions remain about how quickly the variants can spread, their potential to evade immunity and how effective the vaccines are against the variants.
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mRNA vaccine of SARS-CoV-2 spike protein with deletion of multiple glycosites is broadly protective against variants of concern
Since the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) in December 2019 that caused Coronavirus Induced Disease 2019 (COVID-19), the virus has spread all over the world and caused more than 411 million infections and 5.8 million deaths in 25 months. Vaccination is an effective strategy to control the spread of SARS-CoV-2, and the protective antibodies induced by the vaccine are known to recognize the viral surface spike (S) protein and primed the T cell response. However, current vaccines may lose their efficacy because of the high mutation rate of SARS-CoV-2. To overcome this problem, development of a universal SARS-CoV-2 vaccine with broad protection against the current and upcoming variants is needed.
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Dr. Chi-Huey Wong Honored as 2022 Recipient of the Tetrahedron Prize
Elsevier and the Board of Executive Editors of Elsevier’s Tetrahedron journal series has announced Academician Chi-Huey Wong as the recipient of the 2022 Tetrahedron Prize for Creativity in Organic Synthesis, in honor of his outstanding contributions in organic synthesis research. Dr. Wong is the first scholar from Taiwan to receive this award.
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Novel MMT-based iron/platinum nanoparticles designed to enhance MRI contrast and HCC treatment
Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) plays a pivotal role in the medical care of patients with or at risk for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Clinically, there exists about a 35% chance that contrast agents will be needed to improve the image sensitivity of MRI examinations. Commonly used products are iron-based contrast agents and gadolinium-based contrast agents.
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Prof. Chi-Huey Wong ‒ First Glycoscientist Receives 2021 Welch Award in Chemistry
The Welch Foundation has announced that Academician Chi-Huey Wong, the Distinguished Research Fellow of Genomics Research Center, Academia Sinica has been awarded the 2021 Welch Award in Chemistry.
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Activation of Prp28 ATPase at the Heart of Spliceosome for Spliceosomal Remodeling
Rubik’s Cube is one of the most popular 3D combinatorial games that captivates the world with its amazing complexity hidden behind the deceptively simplistic six bright colors. Remarkably, the most accomplished players can solve a completely scrambled Rubik’s Cube in less than twelve seconds. Few people, however, know that there is an equally complex Rubik’s Cube-like molecular machine in the cell. This machine is called “Spliceosome”, which must be sequentially remodeled or tweaked, just like the Rubik’s Cube, before it can be properly functioning in the gene expression pathway.
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Anti-Siglec-3 mAb as immune checkpoint inhibitor to combat Hepatitis B infection
Hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection is a worldwide health problem. According to WHO’s report, there are over 257 million peoples globally infected by hepatitis B virus. HBV infection is prevalent in China, Taiwan, and Southeast Asia countries. Approximately 887,000 individuals die each year from HBV-related liver diseases or liver cancer.
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One Amino Acid Change Twice Immune Effect in CLEC18A to H5N1
CLEC18A is a member of C-type lectin family which is known to have influence over innate and adaptive antimicrobial immune responses, and its unknown biological mechanisms is to be unveiled.
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Simplified Procedure to Prepare Remdesivir for SARS-CoV-2 and Nipah Virus
After grappling with the corona virus, SARS-CoV-2, for more than a year, the world is still being haunted by Covid-19. Remdesivir is the first drug approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to treat Covid-19. In May 2020, Taiwanese authority also approved the use of remdesivir in patients with severe COVID-19 symptoms.
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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.
