On September 17, a delegation from Leiden University in Netherland visited Shanghai Institute for Advanced Immunochemical Studies (SIAIS). The delegation, led by Professor Peter ten Dijke and Professor Jacques Neefjes, met with the Executive Director of SIAIS, Jiang Ge at the Y Building. Associate Professor David Baker and Assistant Professor Baoxu Pang from Leiden University Medical Center also attended the meeting.
Professor Neefjes gave a talk titled Chemically separating chromatin damaging from DNA damaging activities in doxorubicin for detoxification and better anti-cancer responses. He introduced the serious side effects and its mechanism caused by the anthracycline doxorubicin, which is one of the most effective and commonly used anti-cancer drugs. With the structure modification, his group discovered several new anthracycline derivatives, which can maintain chromatin activity without destroying double-stranded DNA damage and significantly reduce heart toxicity. This study provides a new school of thought and strategies for the application of anthracycline derivatives as anti-cancer drugs.
After the talk, SIAIS Executive Director Jiang Ge shared the development and scientific research achievements of SIAIS with the visitors. Research Assistant Professor Yang Xiaobao and Song Xiaoling introduced SIAIS’ PROTAD (PROteolysis TARgeting Drug) protein degradation platform. Research Associate Professor Ma Peixiang and Research Assistant Professor Xu Hongtao shared the development of natural products enriched DNA encoding library (nDEL). Professor Peter Ten Dijke expressed his appreciation of current collaborations with SIAIS on nDEL's application and expressed their intention for future collaborations in DEL research. Following the discussion, Professor Peter Ten Dijke and his colleagues visited the laboratory and scientific facilities of SIAIS. Afterwards, they invited Executive Director Jiang Ge to visit the medical center of Leiden University in the future, to extend the collaboration between Leiden University and ShanghaiTech University.
From left: Ma Peixiang, Xu Hongtao, Yang Xiaobao, Jacques Neefjes, Jiang Ge, Peter ten Dijke, David Baker, Baoxu Pang