Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica and Crown Bioscience to develop Mouse Clinical Centre in China

Published: 29-Nov-2013

Will feature the largest annotated PDX and translational oncology platform


The Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica (SIMM), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) has formed a cancer-focused collaboration with US-based Crown Bioscience. As a first step they will build a mouse clinical trial (MCT) centre in Taicang, Jiangsu province, China, which will feature the largest and most advanced translational oncology platforms with fully annotated collections of patient derived xenograft (PDX) models.

The Centre will combine the existing model collections of both organisations (approaching 1,000) and build several thousand new models focusing on major Asian cancer types, including liver (HCC), lung (NSCLC), gastric (GC) and colorectal (CRC) cancers.

It will also expand the combined operational capacity to support global translational oncology capabilities, particularly mouse clinical trial (HuTrial platform) or co-trial, supporting cancer research communities, cancer hospitals and the pharmaceutical industry.

In addition, it will advance PDX-based translational oncology platforms, to advance knowledge of cancer biology and to de-risk drug development. In particular, the Centre will help accelerate the development of SIMM’s pipeline of oncology drug candidates by leveraging Crown’s oncology discovery and translational capabilities, including HuPrime, HuKemia, HuTrial, and HuSignature platforms.

Jian Ding, Director General of SIMM, and the Centre’s first President, said: 'As the largest government-founded research institute focusing on drug development in China, SIMM aims at inventing more world-class drugs to benefit patients in China and worldwide. The premium oncology translational research platform based on PDX models will enable us to have a better understanding of our candidate drugs and to stratify the responsive subgroup patients for personalised therapy.'

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