Tang Prize Newsletter

Dr. James P. Allison’s research brings a glimmer of hope to cancer patients. In 1995, Dr. Allison identified CTLA-4 as an inhibitory receptor on T-cells and recognized it as a potential target for cancer therapy. His team then developed an antibody that blocks CTLA-4 activity which helped reject several different types of tumors in mouse models. This subsequently contributed to the development of an antibody drug, which has undergone clinical trials against stage 4 melanoma. Therefore, this drug has been approved by the U.S. FDA in 2011, saving numerous lives!

In 1992, Prof. Tasuku Honjo discovered the checkpoint molecule PD-1 and the crucial role it plays in allowing cancer cells to evade the antitumor immune response. He and many other researchers have since successfully developed several antibodies targeting PD-1. One such antibody, nivolumab (Opdivo®), had produced complete or partial responses in patients with non-small-cell lung cancer, melanoma, and renal-cell carcinoma in clinical trials and has received its first FDA approval in 2014, opening a new chapter in cancer treatment and increasing the survival rates of cancer patients.

When carrying out research on bacterial RNAs, Dr. Emmanuelle Charpentier found out that the function of bacteria’s adaptive immune defense system, known as CRISPR, can be harnessed to edit genes. Subsequently, through the exploration of CRISPR’s activities, Dr. Charpentier noticed that the crRNA and the tracrRNA are like a GPS system embedded in our body that guides Cas 9 protein to a specific site of particular DNA sequences.

This important discovery led to Charpentier's collaboration with American RNA structural biologist, Dr. Jennifer Doudna. Together they successfully clasped together these two species of RNA to form an RNA complex, a single guide RNA or sg RNA, making it easier to locate the target DNA and making CRISPR/Cas9 technology simpler and more efficient.