Prof. Ming-Jer Tsai and Sophia Y. Tsai Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, Baylor College of Medicine at Houston,USA visited Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica(SIMM) under Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) on June 26, 2017. Prof. Ming-Jer Tsai delivered an academic lecture on COUP-TFII’s role in prostate cancer and other diseases and Prof. Sophia Y. Tsai did it on COUP-TFII’s function in heart failure.

Prof. Sophia Y. Tsai presented the progress on dissecting the roles of COUP-TFII in the heart failure in her lab. The data revealed that the overexpression of COUP-TFII deteriorates heart failure and its driving mechanisms.

Prof. Ming-Jer Tsai gave a presentation about the adverse effect of COUP-TFII in the drug resistant prostate cancer and Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, and it serves as drug target in those diseases. Then, he focused on describing the preliminary pharmacodynamic effects of several COUP-TFII inhibitor candidates in the prostate xenograft nude mouse model. Those chemical compounds were synthesized at Eric Xu lab in SIMM. He pointed out that the further chemical modification on those lead chemical is highly like to produce several chemical available for the preclinical research and development.

Most of the audiences showed great interests in their findings. Those novel findings provide a solid mechanistic basis in the prevention and management of heart failure, prostate cancer and Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy.

The lecture intrigued a hot discussion between the lecturers and the attendees.

(Credit: WANG Man)