HKUMed Scientist Pursues Drug Development Dream with Major Funding

HKUMed
HKU Medicine
Published in
4 min readNov 13, 2024
Professor Chen stands in his laboratory with a member of his team

A HKUMed researcher is working to achieve his dream of turning his findings into a drug to treat patients with the help of major government funding.

Professor Chen Zhiwei, Founding Director of the AIDS Institute at the University of Hong Kong, is developing an antibody drug to treat cancers and infections that targets a protein his team originally discovered in 2013.

“Although the pressure is high, I am very lucky to have the opportunity to make my dream come true,” he said. “After spending my whole life in basic research, now I want to see some of our discoveries really being used to benefit patients in the clinic.”

Professor Chen’s efforts to advance the drug to human clinical trials represent the culmination of his work in medical research.

After completing his undergraduate studies in mainland China, he moved to the United States to study AIDS in monkey models in the early 1990s.

Later in that decade, he joined the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center where he developed a focus on viral pathogenesis and immunology. He moved to HKUMed in 2007 to continue his research as China faced an upswing of HIV cases.

Professor Chen stands in his laboratory
Professor Chen is working to take his findings from the laboratory through to clinical trials

This spring, he received substantial funding through the Hong Kong government’s new Research, Academic, and Industry Sectors One-+ Scheme (RAISe+) to develop the drug targeting the protein Δ42PD1.

With this funding and the support of technology transfer expertise at HKU and the Faculty of Medicine, he is now working to achieve this goal.

His team discovered the Δ42PD1 a decade ago. Subsequent research found that the protein plays an important role in human diseases, including HIV and some cancers.

Their studies identified Δ42PD1 as an immune regulatory protein, or novel immune checkpoint molecule. The team found that when there is a high amount of the protein in CD8 T cells, a type of immune cell commonly known as killer cells, the cells cannot kill virus-infected cells or cancer cells.

To overcome this effect, the team generated an antibody that inhibits the protein, effectively turning the T cells back on.

“When we did animal model studies, we found that this antibody by targeting this new protein inhibits tumour growth and reduces inflammation relating to HIV infections,” he said. “We want to see if we can bring this discovery from the laboratory into industrial manufacture then further on into human clinical trials.”

Immune checkpoint inhibitors are a type of immunotherapy used to treat cancers. The market for these drugs was estimated at US$49.5 billion in 2023 and is expected to grow to US$123.3 billion by 2023. Δ42PD1 confers resistance to current immune checkpoint inhibitors.

Professor Chen’s funding comes as HKUMed is placing renewed focus on transferring medical research from the bench to the bedside.

Professor Chen stands in a corridor with a view of a green hillside
Professor Chen is working with experts from multiple fields to bring his dream to fruition

The Faculty recently established a Technology Transfer Unit to build closer ties with pharmaceutical companies, venture capitalists, incubators and accelerators, government and intellectual property experts to advance medical research. The TTU works closely with the HKU Techno-Entrepreneurship Core and its Technology Transfer Office.

The scientist said the TTU and HKU’s Technology Transfer Office have given valuable help with negotiations and liaison with government departments.

Through HKUMed’s connections, he and his industry partner have met more than 100 potential investors and collaborators to secure funding through to the clinical trials stage of the project.

To smooth the process, Professor Chen is collaborating with long-term partner Immuno Cure for its industrial expertise, which has matched the government funding. He has also created a start-up, Orimmune BioTech Limited, to pursue commercialisation of the drug.

Even with this support, Professor Chen feels the pressure to condense the usual 10-year development timeline for antibody drugs into half the time.

He has outlined an intensive five-year plan to achieve this goal within the RAISe+ funding’s time limits.

To date, he has already found partners in mainland China to manufacture the drug but time is tight to receive the necessary certifications and animal safety tests to proceed to clinical trials.

“Once the programme starts running, you cannot stop in the middle,” he said. “If we have a major funding gap, that’s a potential major interruption. And we don’t want this to fail.”

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HKU Medicine
HKU Medicine

Published in HKU Medicine

HKUMed is the longest established institution in higher education of Hong Kong. It was founded as the Hong Kong College of Medicine for Chinese by London Missionary Society in 1887, and was renamed as the Hong Kong College of Medicine in 1907.

HKUMed
HKUMed

Written by HKUMed

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