China Builds the World’s Largest Kinase Target Cell Screening Library

Recently, the Chinese Academy of Sciences Hefei Institute of Physical Sciences, Strong Magnetic Field Science Center built the world’s largest cancer kinase target based on high-throughput cell screening library. The cell bank contains nearly 70 kinds of cancer kinase target, cell types of more than 150 species, which covering almost the current known and the development of tumor-related all kinase and kinase mutant cells. The completion of the cell bank to fulfill the field of domestic drug manufacturing such a blank system will provide a strong support for anti-tumor drug research and development.

After more than a decade of development, individualized clinical high response rate of targeted drug research has made great progress.  There are more than 30 in clinical use already, but these drugs can only cover more than 10 kinds of certain cancer subtypes and the vast majority of the clinical type of cancer and its subtypes have not yet corresponded to targeted drugs.  In addition, with the development of clinical drug therapy, some kinases appear mutated, resulting in drug resistance, but also further increased the difficulty of the development of new drugs.

Strong magnetic field center Liu Qingsong pharmacology team continues to overcome technical difficulties from scratch, with more than four years’ time to mouse cells as the original template, the use of genetic engineering means for the current clinical common cancer-related kinase target, a large cancer kinase cell bank that relies only on the target gene growth.

The cell library currently covers nearly 70 major kinase targets associated with tumor progression and development, covering the vast majority of mutations associated with clinical treatment, drug resistance and prognosis found in clinical cancer patients and cell types have reached more than 150 species.

There are two important characteristics of the cell library, one is a single background of gene changes, compared with the traditional complex gene background cancer cell lines, it can indicate more accurately and quickly to the mechanism of action of drugs. Second, it is possible to rapidly convert the newly discovered mutations of various kinase genes into a single cell research model, which can overcome the difficulties of the related stable cell lines and the small sample size of the patients that cannot be further studied.

The cell library in the drug development has two main functions; one is to detect the drug on the design of the target combat activity, which is the most critical indicators of drug efficacy. The cells of the library are dependent on the growth of a single kinase gene, so that if the drug has an effect on the cell growth, the inhibitory activity of the drug on the target kinase can be determined.  Another major function of the cell bank is to detect the target selectivity of the drug and to be an important indicator of the side effects of the drug.  Since the cell bank covers more than 70 different kinases, it is possible to quickly determine the effect of the drug on other kinases other than the target, thereby effectively assessing the target selectivity of the drug and the possible drug Side effects were predicted.

In order to allow more domestic enterprises committed to the development of new drugs benefited from this screening system, the team relies on pharmaceutical companies for the industrialization of the promotion platform, from the second half of 2016 so far, which has been uninterrupted for nearly 100 domestic research institutes and pharmaceutical companies to provide high-quality drug testing and screening services, and has accessed to a wide range of industry recognition.