Prof. Xiyun Yan's laboratory focuses on the precise treatment of cancer ，finding novel targets and developing new methods for tumor diagnosis and therapy.
Nanozymes: Discovery and its application in biomedicine
Our group firstly observed the intrinsic enzyme-like activity of iron oxide nanoparticles and revealed the underlying kinetic and thermodynamic mechanism of iron oxide nanozyme (Nature Nanotechnology 2007, citations over 1500 times). This finding changed the general idea that nanoparticles are chemically inert, and opened many new applications for nanoparticles in many important fields, including medicine, agriculture, food production, biotechnology, and environmental protection. We followed raising the new concept of “nanozyme” and established the standardization method by which catalytic activity of different nanozymes could be compared. Since the first report of the discovery that iron oxide nanoparticles having intrinsic peroxidase-like activity, we have, based on this new property, developed several new technologies for cancer diagnosis (Nature Nanotechnology, 2012) and therapy (PNAS 2014), and developed nanozyme-strip for rapid local detection of infectious diseases like Ebola virus disease (Biosensor Bioelectron,2016). To date, nanozyme has developed as an emerging field that bridges biology and nanotechnology.
CD146:Discovery and its application in tumor immunotherapy
Our group developed an antibody-driven screening platform to discover novel tumor targets. Using this platform, many novel tumor antigens were discovered and identified. CD146 was identified as a marker for tumor vascular endothelia. Further research demonstrated its functions in tumor angiogenesis as a receptor triggered by the pro-angiogenic cytokines, and more importantly, as a critical node in the signaling network of tumor microenvironments, coordinating the angiogenesis, migration and inflammation of tumor. Based on the discovery of CD146 as tumor target, we developed its humanized antibody, AA98, which dramatically inhibited tumor growth by blocking the signaling mediated by CD146 in tumor angiogenesis, migration and inflammation. To boost the transformation from basic findings to commercialized applications, we established the technological platform for pilot production and pre-clinical study of humanized antibodies. The proprietary technology of AA98 in cancer therapy had been licensed out at a value of $17 million. From discovery of the novel target to its subsequent applications in translational medicine, these systematic studies have resulted in around 40 scientific papers in journals including Blood (2003, 2012), PNAS (2012), Oncogene (2012), Nature Communications (2013) and Cell Research (2015).
