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Shenogen Pharma Blends East and West

 July 29, 2008 11:40 AM
 

"Two years ago, when I decided to come back to China, I wanted an opportunity to change people's lives and to help China's pharmaceutical industry," said Dr. Jin Li, COO of Shenogen Pharma Group, in an exclusive interview with ChinaBio® Today. Dr. Li was speaking in highly personal terms of his professional odyssey as a returnee, or Hai Gui (literally, "sea turtle"). "If many of us who have an understanding of Western pharma invest and work in China's companies, we can do that. I will add a little bit, and everybody will add a little bit," he continued. "But if we do just what Western pharma does, we won't develop a unique China pharmaceutical pathway."

Those words say a great deal about Dr. Li. But they also describe his company, Shenogen Pharma Group, which is a combination of Western practices and traditional Chinese medicines. It is also a highly innovative company that, despite its small size, is taking on a very large goal: small molecule and biologic drugs that are potential treatments for breast cancer and obesity.

The story has proved to be compelling. At the recently held ChinaBio® Investor Forum in Shanghai, 21 young companies presented their business plans to the over 80 venture capitalists in attendance, and Shenogen was one of two presenters selected by a panel of 12 of the VCs to win a "Most Promising Company" award. The Investor Forum was organized by ChinaBio® Accelerator, a sister organization to ChinaBio® Today, and hosted by ShanghaiBio Corporation, a rapidly growing CRO in Zhangjiang Hi-Tech Park. (See www.ChinaBioLLC.com and www.shanghaibio.com.

Drug Research

To trace a short history of this young company, about three years ago, one of the four founders of Shenogen, Zhao-Yi (Charlie) Wang, discovered ER-a36, a novel variant of the estrogen receptor, as part of his research at Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska. Previously, ER-a66 had been considered the main estrogen receptor that mediated estrogen signaling and estrogen-stimulated cell proliferation in estrogen-caused breast cancer. Wang showed that ER-a36 was also a significant participant in the estrogen signaling process. ER-a36 is situated in the membrane. Membrane mediated estrogen signaling had been thought to exist, but its mechanism was never proven until Dr. Wang completed his research.

ER-a66, the long-characterized estrogen signaling receptor that is located in the nucleus, is also the target through which the breast cancer drug tamoxifen works. Tamoxifen, in use for 30 years, is a very successful drug that still produces several billions of dollars of annual revenues for its manufacturers. Generally, it is given for five years following successful cancer treatment to prevent relapse.

According to Shenogen's website, ER-a36 has considerable sequence homology with ER-a66, but distinguishes itself by a unique C-terminal 27 amino acid sequence. It appears to function through a totally different mechanism.


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