New Journal of Pharmaceutical Analysis articles showcase innovative approaches for diagnostics and drug screening and evaluation

Cancer and cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) continue to be two of the biggest challenges facing modern medicine. Developing better diagnostic procedures, as well as drug screening and assessment techniques, are crucial steps in the path to more effective treatments. The latest issue of the JPA features three articles on cutting-edge research in these directions.

The first study reports a novel non-invasive diagnostic tool to detect gastrointestinal tumors and was available online in February 2023 and published in Volume 13, Issue 4 of the journal in April 2023. This Good Manufacturing Practices-compliant probe is based on TST001, a man-made antibody that targets the protein CLDN18.2, which is overexpressed in various types of cancers. By labelling this antibody with radioactive zirconium, the researchers could quickly and non-invasively measure the expression of CLDN18.2 in both cancer cell lines and in vivo mouse models.

Currently, CLDN18.2 is measured using immunohistochemistry, which is invasive and limited in scope. This new approach, however, represents a great advantage over the conventional method. Talking about the potential applications of their research, author Hua Zhu, remarks, “With the increasing popularity of positron emission tomography and computed tomography equipment, we expect our probe to be used for screening patients with higher potential benefit from therapy, localizing systemic lesions, and evaluating the efficacy of novel drugs.”

The second article by Cheng et al. discusses the pharmacological effects of two precious traditional Chinese medicinal herbs: Panax ginseng (PG) and Panax notoginseng (PN). The team developed a novel RNA sequencing-based, low-cost workflow called ‘TCM-seq’, which enabled them to simultaneously measure the effects of different doses of PG and PN components on multiple cell lines at the RNA or transcriptome level, greatly reducing experimental times and costs. Their findings indicated that saponins found in PG and PN may regulate genes involved in CVD and coagulation, respectively. “Our study proposes a new paradigm to comprehensively explore the differences in the mechanisms of action of Chinese medicines based on transcriptome readout,” the corresponding author Xiaohui Fan remarks.

In the third study, researchers show how the mechanical and physiological properties of a cell can be useful for evaluating drug efficacy. To this end, they mechanically stimulated breast cancer and kidney cells, and developed a mathematical framework to record the change in their mechanical (viscosity and elasticity) properties in response to the drugs doxorubicin and paclitaxel. The technique can be used in cell cultures started form tumor samples at the single-cell level. According to the corresponding author Wenxue Wang, “Applying our approach for susceptibility testing before clinical chemotherapy will help improve the therapeutic effect of drugs and promote the advancement of personalized medicine”.

Overall, these studies will pave the way to a deeper understanding of complex diseases like cancer and provide new techniques to discover, develop, and analyze the efficacy of treatments.

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Reference

DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpha.2023.02.011

Authors: Yan Chen^1,2, Xingguo Hou², Dapeng Li^1,2, Jin Ding², Jiayue Liu², Zilei Wang^2,3, Fei Teng⁴, Hongjun Li⁴, Fan Zhang⁴, Yi Gu⁴, Steven Yu⁴, Xueming Qian⁴, Zhi Yang^1,2,5, and Hua Zhu^1,2,5

Affiliations:

¹Guizhou University Medicine College

^bThe Ministry of Education Key Laboratory of Carcinogenesis and Translational Research; NMPA Key Laboratory for Research and Evaluation of Radiopharmaceuticals, Department of Nuclear Medicine, Peking University Cancer Hospital & Institute

³Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, School of Basic Medical Sciences, Southwest Medical University

⁴Suzhou Transcenta Therapeutics Co., Ltd.

⁵Institute of Biomedical Engineering, Peking University Shenzhen Graduate School