Institute of Medical Biology,Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences

CHENGDU, China, June 20, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Keymed Biosciences Inc. (HKEX: 02162) today announced that Lei Zhang/Renchi Yang's team from the Institute of Hematology, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences has recently published a research paper entitled "A Novel Anti-CD38 Monoclonal Antibody for Treating Immune Thrombocytopenia" in the New England Journal of Medicine. This is an investigator-initiated, single-arm, open-label phase I/II study evaluating the safety and preliminary efficacy of CM313 in adult patients with primary ITP. A total of 22 patients were enrolled in the study, with one patient dropping out after the first infusion. The remaining 21 patients completed both the 8-week treatment and 16-week follow-up periods. Results showed that 95.5% of patients (21/22) achieved a platelet count of ≥50 × 109/L during the 8-week treatment period, with a median cumulative response duration of 23 weeks (interquartile range, 17 to 24). The median time to first platelet count of ≥50 × 109/L was 1 week (range: 1-3), and the median time to first platelet count of ≥30 × 109/L with a ≥2-fold increase from baseline was 1 week. Additionally, the durable sustained platelet count response rate (defined as a platelet count of ≥50 × 109/L observed six or more times among the final eight platelet counts) was 63.6% (14/22). Throughout the entire study, overall response (complete or partial response) was observed in 21 patients, with 20 patients achieving complete response. The proportion of patients with bleeding decreased from 68.2% (15/22) at baseline to 4.8 (1/21) at week 8. Most patients discontinued concomitant medications due to the restoration of platelet counts to normal or safe levels with CM313 treatment. In summary, CM313 demonstrated rapid and sustained efficacy in 95.5% of ITP patients who had previously received multiple therapies. Safety analyses showed that CM313 was well-tolerated. CM313 is a humanized monoclonal antibody targeting CD38 and the first domestically-developed anti-CD38 antibody with IND approval by the NMPA in China. Previous phase I/II studies have demonstrated the favorable safety profile and encouraging efficacy of CM313 in patients with RRMM and primary ITP. In addition, the potential use of CM313 in SLE is currently under clinical development. About Keymed Biosciences Inc. Keymed Biosciences Inc. (HKEX: 02162) focuses on the urgent unmet clinical needs, and is committed to providing high-quality, affordable, innovative therapies for patients in China and overseas. To accelerate the efficiency of our research and discovery, the Company has established a fully-integrated platform encompassing all of the key functions in the biological drug development which include target validation, lead molecule discovery and optimization, preclinical evaluation, process development, translational research, clinical development and manufacturing. This integrated platform has enabled us to rapidly and cost-effectively identify, build, expand and advance our diversified pipeline of innovative and differentiated antibody-based therapies, including monoclonal antibodies, antibody drug conjugates (ADCs) and bispecific antibodies. SOURCE Keymed

Researchers have isolated a new strain of marine bacteria with unique characteristics from the ocean seabed. Researchers have isolated a new strain of marine bacteria with unique characteristics from the ocean seabed. The research, published today as a Reviewed Preprint in eLife, is described by the editors as an important study that advances our understanding of physiological mechanisms in deep-sea Planctomycetes bacteria, revealing unique characteristics such as being the only known species in the class of Phycisphaerae bacteria that uses a distinct budding model of division. It provides what the editors also say is convincing evidence that the new species is extensively involved in nitrogen assimilation and lives with a chronic virus (bacteriophage) that facilitates nitrogen metabolism. Nitrogen cycling by bacteria is an essential process that frees up nitrogen for building into nucleic acids, amino acids and proteins -- the building blocks of life. "Until recently, most research on the Planctomycetes family of bacteria has focused on strains in freshwater and shallow ocean environments, because of the logistical difficulties associated with sampling and cultivating deep-sea strains," says lead author Rikuan Zheng, a research associate at the Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China, and the National Laboratory for Marine Science and Technology, Qingdao, China. "Most Planctomycetes bacteria have been isolated using growth media that are nutritionally poor, so we wanted to see if using a nutrient-rich medium would make it possible to culture and further characterise members of this poorly understood family." To isolate the novel bacterium, the team took sediment samples from a deep-sea cold seep, where Planctomycetes bacteria are known to reside, and then encouraged their growth by supplementing a standard growth medium with the antibiotic rifampicin and sources of nitrogen. They cultured these enriched bacteria on agar and evaluated individual colonies further by gene sequencing. Among the bacteria, they identified a strain called ZRK32 that grew faster than others, and looked likely to be a member of the genus Poriferisphaera. To confirm this, the team compared the genetic similarities between this strain and other members of the Poriferisphaera genus and found that it was distinguishable from Poriferisphaera corsica, the only other species with a valid published name. This suggests that ZRK32 is a novel species -- which the team proposes to call Poriferisphaera hetertotrophicis. To learn more about this new species, the team studied its growth and how it multiplies. They found that, unlike other Planctomycetes family members, Poriferisphaera hetertotrophicis grows better in nutrient-rich media and multiplies via a budding mechanism, where parent cells create outgrowth buds that develop into daughter cells. As the Planctomycetes bacteria family is known to play an important role in nitrogen cycling, the team next explored whether this was also the case for Poriferisphaera hetertotrophicis. To test this, they looked at the effects of different nitrogen-containing substances -- nitrates, ammonia and nitrogen dioxide -- on Poriferisphaera hetertotrophicis growth. They found that adding nitrogen in the form of a nitrate or ammonia increased growth, whereas adding it as a nitrite inhibited growth. They also discovered that the addition of nitrate or ammonia caused the novel strain to release a bacteriophage -- a type of virus that infects bacteria. Bacteriophages are widely distributed across oceans and can regulate nitrogen metabolism in their host bacteria. This bacteriophage -- called phage-ZRK32 -- was able to increase the growth of Poriferisphaera hetertotrophicis and other marine bacteria dramatically by facilitating nitrogen metabolism. Even though the team's genetic analysis suggested Poriferisphaera hetertotrophicis contains all the necessary genes for metabolising nitrate and ammonia, chronic infection with this bacteriophage may help to further optimise nitrogen metabolism. "Our analyses indicate that strain ZRK32 is a novel species, which grows best in nutrient-rich media and releases a bacteriophage in the presence of nitrogen," concludes senior author Chaomin Sun, a Professor at the Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the National Laboratory for Marine Science and Technology. "This phage-ZRK32 is a chronic bacteriophagethat lives within its host without killing it. Our findings provide a novel insight into nitrogen metabolism in Planctomycetes bacteria and a suitable model to study the interactions between Planctomycetes and viruses."

GUANGZHOU, China, May 8, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- On April 16th 2023, the first International Conference on Single-cell and Spatial Omics (TICSSO-1) has come to a grand conclusion. The conference brings together on site over 2,000 professionals from academia, research and development, investment and other fields interested to the conference topics in Guangzhou. The conference webcasts also garner significant online attention, with a record of over 548,245 live streaming audience around the world, from countries including the United States, Germany, United Kingdom, France, Canada, Japan, Australia, Russia, and other countries. The conference is reported by more than 200 domestic and foreign media outlets, including People's Daily, Southern Daily, Information Times, and Sino-US Times. Single cell and spatial omics technologies, with a series of significant breakthroughs in recent years ,have been extensively applied in tumor, developmental biology, neuroscience, immunology, infectious diseases, and other areas, acting as one of the hot spots in researches of life science, drug development, and precision clinical medicine. Relevant data analysis expects that the prospective market size for global single-cell analysis will exceed $8 billion by 2028. 5 Academicians from U.S. and Chinese leads TICSSO-1 as honorary Chairmen Five honorary Chairmen leads TICSSO-1 and they are Dr. Sherman Weissman, Sterling Professor of Yale University, a member of the National Academy of Sciences of USA; Dr. David Weitz, Mallinckrodt Professor of Harvard University, a member of the National Academy of Sciences of USA; Dr. Li Jin, Professor of Fudan University, a member of Chinese Academy of Sciences; Dr. Qimin Zhan, Professor of Peking University, a member of Chinese Academy of Engineering, and Dr. Tianming Gao, Professor of Southern Medical University, a member of Chinese Academy of Engineering. The five academicians deliver highly inspiring academic speeches. Professor Dr. Li Ma, the Vice President of Southern Medical University and an official representative of the organizer, along with Mr. Hongqing Li, Associate Counsellor of Guangzhou Municipal Science and Technology Bureau and the local government representative, make a special visit to congratulate and support the conference. Ms. Fanglin Zheng, the President of the Chinese Association for Science and Technology in the USA (CAST-USA), extends her congratulations through video. Dr. David Weitz from Harvard University, and a pioneer for high-throughput single cell transcriptomics, highlights that single-cell sequencing is a significant technological milestone in life science. He explains that this technology allows scientists to acquire a more profound understanding of cells and genes, which has in turn enabled them to better comprehend the molecular mechanisms of complicate biomedical processes and diseases at single-cell level. He expects that the participants of TICSSO-1 including academic experts and industry professionals, will be inspired to expand their explorations while collaborating each other to promote new directions and discoveries in variant fields of biomedical research. According to Dr. Sherman Weissman from Yale University, one of the pioneers in whole genome sequencing and the Human Genome Project, the emergence of single-cell sequencing technology has fundamentally transformed our understanding of molecular biology. New theories in addition with new technologies are emerging in response to the vast amount of data generated in single-cell sequence and spatial analysis. The new tools such as ChatGPT might be utilized to effectively mine, analyze, and interpret the data, which will boost the efficiency of single-cell researches and applications in the future. During his speech, Dr. Li Jin, Professor and President of Fudan University as well as President of the Greater Bay Area Institute of Precision Medicine, who is the pioneer in phenomics, highlights the significant advancements achieved in the single-cell and spatial-omics industry in recent years. He states that these groundbreaking technologies have become widely used in both basic and clinical researches in biomedicine. Dr. Jin emphasizes that the combination of single-cell omics and phenomics in the future will definitely push the life science research to a new height. He expresses his belief that with the efforts of international and domestic experts, the field of single-cell and spatial omics will soon enter a golden era of robust development. "Single-cell and spatial omics technology is a cutting-edge tool for precision medicine research and application." The comments by Professor Qimin Zhan of Peking University, former Executive Vice President of Peking University, and a top molecular oncologist, is highly encouraging. According to Dr. Zhan, single cell technology has been deployed in the "13th Five-Year Plan" Biotechnology Innovation Special Plan as a promising technology. When combining with spatial omics, it owns the potential to revolutionize the model of medical research and basic prevention and control of diseases, providing innovative solutions to precision medicine strategies and genetic health problems. Dr. Tianming Gao from Southern Medical University, an top neuroscience expect in molecular mental health study, remarks that in recent years, single-cell sequencing has made continuous advances and has progressed to the stage marked low-cost, high-throughput, high-accuracy and high-automation ability. With rapid improvement in efficiency and application, this technology is now playing an indispensable role in neuroscience, besides other fields, and it has become a central focus in life science, and medical diagnosis and treatment. Dr. Gao believes that this conference provides a top-level academic exchange platform for researchers, which will greatly enhance the cooperation and innovation among single-cell industry experts and lend impetus to its development. Over 200 keynote presentations share a feast of ideas, building industry-academia-research linkage Over 200 experts, scholars and industry elites from universities, research institutes and renowned enterprises participate in in-depth discussions around the theme of "Focusing on Academic Frontiers, Accelerating Scientific and Technological Transformation". Multiple forums in parallel are held in the conference, including "the main forum", "multi-omics frontiers", "spatial omics development", "clinical translation and application", "bioinformatics", "technology and equipment",, and "International Forum". A variety of topics are discussed during the conference. During the main forum, Dr. Fuchou Tang, Professor from the School of Life Sciences of Peking University, presents the technology advancements of single-cell chromatin accessibility analysis based on the third-generation sequencing. These researches bring new discoveries on human early embryo development, germ cell development and carcinogenesis. Dr. Tang explored the single-cell transcriptomic sequencing, marking the beginning of single-cell sequencing era. Among others, these eminent professors and researchers delivery lectures during the TICSSO-1:. Dr. Bing Su from Shanghai Jiaotong University, Dr. Guoji Guo from Zhejiang University, Dr. Yuehai Ke from Zhejiang University, Dr. Xiaoyang Zhao from Southern Medical University, Dr. Chaoyong Yang from Shanghai Jiaotong University, Dr. Aibin He from Peking University, Dr. Yunlong Cao from Peking University, Dr. Jinxin Bei from Sun Yat-sen University, Dr. Rong Fan from Yale University, Dr. Chengran Xu from Peking University, Dr. Guangdun Peng from Chinese Academy of Sciences, Dr. Gang Cao from Huazhong Agricultural University, Prof, Dr. Guobing Chen from Jinan University, Dr. Ge Gao from Peking University, Dr. Jianbin Wang from Tsinghua University, Dr. Yuxia Zhang from Guangzhou Women and Children Medical Center, Dr. Xianting Ding from Shanghai Jiaotong University, Dr. Yong Zhang from Tongji University, Dr. Xianwen Ren from Beijing Changping Laboratory, Dr. Guangchuang Yu from Southern Medical University, Dr. Dong Wang from Southern Medical University, Dr. Kun Qu from University of Science and Technology of China, and Dr. Xinghua Pan from Southern Medical University, who severs as the Director of Guangdong Key Laboratory of Single Cell Technology and Application. The organizing committee of TICSSO pledges to keep track of and report on the latest developments of these experts. The TICSSO-1 also holds an International Youth Forum, focusing on the frontier developments of single-cell sequencing technology and the opportunities and challenges it presents. The forum invites young scholars from overseas to share their recent progress, and to communicate with the attendants for their insight. These raising stars are from esteemed institutions such as Cambridge University, Yale University, UCSD, Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Microbiology and Shanghai Institute of Nutrition and Health, New York Genome Center, Weizmann Institute of Science, Wellcome Sanger Institute, MD Anderson Cancer Center, Harvard Medical School and the Broad Institute, Southern Medical University and other institution .During the forum, the discussion fuels creativity and enthusiasm for collaboration for everyone in the event. During the conference, two sessions of roundtable panel discussions are held on site. "How to promote the high-quality development of single-cell and spatial omics" as the theme of the academic roundtable, and "How to build a healthy ecological environment for the sustainable development of single-cell spatial omics industry" as the theme of the corporate roundtable. This event is attended by prominent exhibitors from both domestic and international companies, including BD, NanoString, Gene Company Limited, 10x Genomics, PacBio, Mission Bio, MobiDrop, Novel Bio, Oebiotech, Cytek Biosciences, Tenk Genomics, Salus Biomed, Dynamic Biosystems, ThunderBio, MemVerge, Sequanta, Capital Bio, Novogene, Anoroad, Biomarker, BioLegend, Illumina, Applied Protein Technology, Abiosciences, Element Biosciences, SequMed, Seekgene, MGI, Singleron. As a part of the TICSSO-1, TICSSO-1 International Virtual Conference was held during the Covid19 pandemic in November 7 of 2021. Dr. Alex K. Shalek from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Dr. Sarah A. Teichmann from Cambridge University, Dr. Jay Shendure from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at the University of Washington, Dr. Muzlifah Haniffa from the University of Newcastle, Dr. Steven Henikoff from the University of Washington Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Dr. Siyuan Wang from Yale University, Dr. Kun Zhang from University of California, San Diego, Dr. Rong Fan from Yale University, Dr. Hongjie Li from Baylor College of Medicine, and Dr. Xiaojiang Xu from Tulane University School of Medicine, Dr. Junwen Wang from the University of Hong Kong along with other distinguished guests, deliver excellent lectures and discussions. More than 100,000 global peers joined this online event. Additionally, the ceremony of the Single Cell Pioneer Awards is also held during the conference. More than 30 well known industrial entities win the awards for variants of extraordinary contributions to the development of single cell and spatial omics, and to the event. As one of the largest and most influential conferences in the field of single-cell omics and spatial omics, the 1st TICSSO Conference wins an great success and public attention. The aim of the conference is to build a high-level international exchange and collaboration platform for researchers and industry members to gather wisdom and power for advancing single cell omics and spatial omics. Through this effort, the conference hopes to further promote technology innovation, theoretical breakthrough, and transformation upgrading in this field. TICSSO is an unprecedented academic feast that allows the frontier scientists in different disciplines associated with single cell omics to communicate and collide with sparks of wisdom, pushing the atmosphere to the new climax. Many participants express that they are full of harvest and are looking forward to play in the next TICSSO conference. The International Conference on Single Cell and Spatial Omics (TICSSO) is organized by the TICSSO organizing committee, initiated and co-chaired by Dr. Xinghua Pan from Southern Medical University, Dr. Fuchou Tang from Peking University, Dr. Guoji Guo from Zhejiang University and a group of other leaders in this field. The conference are co-organized by Southern Medical University, CSBMB Division of Medical Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Chinese Association for Science and Technology USA, Tumor Marker Committee of Chinese Anti-Cancer Association, Greater Bay Area Institute of Precision Medicine (Guangzhou), Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Single Cell Technology and Application, Guangdong Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, and Singleseq.com, etc. The preparations for the 2nd TICSSO conference have initiated. SOURCE TICSSO