Cancer remains the second cause of death in U.S. The American Cancer Society estimated that 1.28 million new cancer cases and 555,000 deaths occurred in 2002, with an enormous public healthcare cost of over $50 billion per year. In 2001, over 10 million people were diagnosed with cancer worldwide and 6,246,000 died from this devastating disease. Combing the newly identified gene targets by functional genomics technologies and taking advantage of the abundant clinical resources in China, the Company has developed a series of novel diagnostic and therapeutic products.
Early cancer diagnosis can significantly improve patients'survival rate. Tumor-specific antigens － proteins expressed on tumor cells but not normal cells — provide the most convenient target for cancer detection. Using functional genomics and immunology technologies, the company has discovered several brand-new members of a tumor surface antigen family ( RLs ). Some of those new members are secreted by tumor cells, thus making them ideal potential targets to develop diagnostic kits. Such kits can be used in initial screening of large population for early cancer diagnosis.
Cancer vaccine has the most promising potential and represents the next generation cancer therapeutics for their higher expected efficacy and lower toxicity than conventional radio- and chemo- therapies. Different from other conventional cancer vaccine strategies, we have combined a number of newly identified tumor-specific antigens with a strong protein adjuvant to boost immune response to eliminate cancer cells. This unique strategy will enable us to develop more potent multivalent vaccines, rather than single protein vaccines currently being tested in clinical trials by others. |
