Professor Sung-Hoon Kim’s team (SNU College of Medicine) and Professor Won-Sik Han’s team (SNU College of Medicine) developed a new technology that allows parallel anti-cancer drug discovery.

Professor Sung-Hoon Kim’s team (SNU College of Medicine) and Professor Won-Sik Han’s team (SNU College of Medicine) developed a new technology that allows parallel anti-cancer drug discovery.
-Expected to play a key role in the research and development of RNA treatment and anti-cancer vaccines in the future

▲(From left) SNU College of Engineering Dr. Choong-Won Lee, Researcher Yong-Ju Lee, Researcher Ah-Hyeon Choi, SNU College of Medicine Professor Han-Byul Lee, Professor Won-Sik Han, and SNU College of Engineering Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Professor Sung-Hoon Kwon.


SNU College of Engineering, (Acting Dean Joon-Ho Song), has created a platform for discovering anti-cancer drug targets by developing a technology that can analyze RNA specifically expressed by cancer cells. The research was a joint research carried out by Professor Sung-Hoon Kim’s team and Professor Won-Sik Han’s team.
When cancer stem cells, which are known as the core of dividing cancer cells, survive a chemotherapy treatment, they can cause residual cancer or a reoccurrence.
However, there was no technology capable of selectively isolating cancer stem cells, which account for a very small percentage of cancer tissues, and it has been difficult to develop anti-cancer drugs that target cancer stem cells.
In addition, since the spatial location of cancer stem cells and their interaction with the microscopic environment are important, there was a need for a technology capable of selectively isolating only specific cells while maintaining spatial information of the cells.
The new transcriptomics technology co-developed by Professor Sung-Hoon’s team and Professor Won-Sik Han’s team can selectively isolate cancer stem cells within cancer tissues while maintaining the spatial information. Additionally, through this technology, the team identified a new property of cancer stem cells.
The team selected cancer stem cells within triple-negative breast cancer with poor prognosis using protein immunoassay, separated them into single cell units using a special laser technology, and identified RNA characteristics through genetic analysis. In the future, it is expected that this technology can be used to develop RNA treatments or anti-cancer vaccines for various forms of cancer.
This research was carried out with the support of the Basic Research Project (Leader Research) of the Ministry of Science and ICT and was published in the world-class journal Nature Communications.


Source: https://ece.snu.ac.kr/community/news?bm=v&bbsidx=52499
Translated by: Do-Hyung Kim, English Editor of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, kimdohyung@snu.ac.kr