On December 24th and 25th, the Institute of Cancer Research under the Shenzhen Bay Laboratory (hereinafter referred to as the ICR) held a year-end summary meeting (academic annual meeting). More than 50 people made up of all principal investigators and related scientific researchers attended the meeting. The meeting revolved around the scientific research progress report, team building and work plans for next year. Wu Hong, deputy director of the laboratory and Tu Huan attended the meeting. Senior researcher Zhang Zemin, as convener of the ICR, chaired the meeting.
Zhang Zemin gave a warm welcome to all research team leaders and researchers who paticipated in this annual academic conference and expressed the hope to strengthen the exchanges between research teams of the ICR through this conference and to build a cutting-edge tumor research center jointly.
Subsequently, 11 PIs from the ICR introduced the work of the research teams this year and the progress of laboratory construction.
Researcher Cui Yongping introduced the team's research direction and recent research achievements on behalf of Zhan Qimin's research team. The research team carried out systematic research on esophageal cancer with high incidence of characteristic malignant tumors in our country, and established the molecular classification of esophageal squamous cell carcinoma among the Chinese group by integrating multi-level molecular variation information and clinical indicators, providing theoretical guidance for clinical diagnosis and treatment.
Senior researcher Wu Hong introduced the main research content of the research group in details, including: through the tumor's inherent immunosuppressive regulation mechanism to change the tumor inflammatory microenvironment and cope with the treatment resistance of immune checkpoint inhibitors; revealing the tumor brain metastasis mechanism and Therapeutic strategy and the drug development that cannot be a targeted.
Senior researcher Zhang Zemin analyzed the characteristics of the innate immune cell profile of more than 20 major high-incidence cancers through single-cell big data, and verified that the two groups of innate immune cells ( play a role of regulation in tumor) that has been discovered by the research team in the early stages have a broad spectrum of existence and Potential regulatory mechanism. The research team had the courage to take on the role this year when COVID-19 is raging, and analyzed the characteristics of the immune profile of COVID-19 patients to provide potential treatment strategies.
Associate researcher Li Qiang introduced the main research content on behalf of Lei Xiaoguang’s research team: through comprehensive utilization of high-throughput drug screening, synthetic organic chemistry, chemical biology, cell biology, molecular genetics and molecular pharmacology, etc. to carry out the development of new anti-tumor drugs targeting transcription factors.
Senior researcher Shen Xuetong summarized the new progress of actin research: one is the biology of actin in the nucleus; the other is the biology of actin modification, and highlighted the recently published actin methylation Research results.
Distinguished researcher Yu Chen first introduced the work of editing cell genomes and fate using CRISPR technology in recent years. The focus of future work of the research group is to use genome engineering and synthetic biology technology to solve the key problems of tumor immunotherapy. At present, the recruitment of the research team and the purchase of instruments are proceeding in an orderly manner, and the laboratory is under gradual construction.
Distinguished researcher, Sun Kun, reported the work of big data processing in computational biology and biomedical in 2020: Ktrim and Msuite software were mainly developed for data preprocessing and methylation data analysis respectively. In terms of accuracy and operating speed, Ease-of-use and other aspects, there is a great improvement when compared to the current software. In addition, a purity evaluation algorithm based on machine learning tumor biopsy samples has been developed, which has been verified in a variety of common cancer types and metastases, and is expected to become a commonly used quality control tool in tumor research.
Distinguished researcher Yin Chengqian introduced recent research achievements and future research plans. The research team will use cutting-edge molecular biology, tumor biology and gene editing technologies, combined with clinical sample analysis and tumor small animal models, to reveal the involvement of cancer kinesins Key signal transduction pathways and exploring effective drug targets for cancer prevention and treatment.
Distinguished researcher Justin L. Tan introduced the main research topic of the research team: the mechanism of oncogenic lineage factor SOX2 promoting small cell lung cancer (SCLC). The first is to determine the SOX2 oncogenic protein complex and identify the downstream tumorigenic pathways regulated by SOX2; the second is to develop a patient-derived xenograft model to evaluate and verify the biological impact of SOX2 tumors in a clinical setting; the third is by passing high-throughput chemical screening to identify new small molecules that interfere with SOX2. These works will determine the detailed mechanism of SOX2 promoting SCLC and discover new targeted therapies for SOX2 in SCLC.
Distinguished researcher, Zhang Lei shared her work published in the journal Cell this year. The research group systematically characterised the characteristics and interactions of colorectal cancer infiltrating myeloid cells at the single-cell level, and used mouse models for CSF1R inhibitors targeting macrophages and dendritic cells. The treatment of CD40 agonists reveals the mechanism of action of these two immunotherapy strategies, and provides new ideas for the development of new immunotherapy options for colorectal cancer.
This annual academic conference is aiming to build an internal academic exchange platform, enhance understanding and cooperation between various research teams and lay a solid foundation for building the Institute of Cancer Research into a cutting-edge academic center that the greatest talents in related research fields will yearn towards.