On September 17, 2019, a delegation from Leiden University in Netherland visited Shanghai Institute for Advanced Immunochemical Studies (SIAIS) in ShanghaiTech University. The delegation, led by Prof. Peter ten Dijke and Prof. Jacques Neefjes, met with the Executive Director of SIAIS, Ge Jiang at Y Building. Associate Prof. David Baker and Assistant Prof. Baoxu Pang from Leiden University medical center also attended the meeting.
Prof. Jacques Neefjes presented 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 the heart toxicity. This study provides a new train of thoughts and strategies for the application of anthracycline derivatives as anti-cancer drugs.
After the talk, Executive Director Ge Jiang shared the development and scientific research achievements of SIAIS with the visitors. Research Assistant Prof. Xiaobao Yang and Xiaoling Song introduced the PROTAD (PROteolysis TARgeting Drug) protein degradation platform in SIAIS. Research Associate Prof. Peixiang Ma and Research Assistant Prof. Hongtao Xu shared the development of natural products enriched DNA encoding library (nDEL). Prof. Peter ten Dijke appreciated current collaborations with SIAIS on nDEL's application and expressed their intention for future collaborations in the DEL research. Following the discussion, Prof. Peter ten Dijke and his colleagues visited the laboratory and scientific facilities of SIAIS. Finally, Prof. Peter ten Dijke and his delegation invited Executive Director Ge Jiang to visit the medical center of Leiden University in the future, to extend the collaboration between Leiden University and ShanghaiTech University.
From left: Peixiang Ma, Hongtao Xu, Xiaobao Yang, Jacques Neefjes, Ge Jiang, Peter ten Dijke, David Baker, Baoxu Pang
