Tri-Service General Hospital on Thursday said that a new cancer drug being developed by the hospital would require lower dosages of medication to treat patients and have a greater effect in treating cancer.
A team of researchers led by the hospital’s surgery division chief Cha Tai-lung (查岱龍) combined the Raf gene inhibitor Sorafenib, a clinically tested medication used in the treatment of cancer, with the synthetic GW5074 powder, producing a drug that has “synergistic anti-cancer effects.”
Cha said that the team tried different combinations of medications, but none were as effective as the combination of Sorafenib and GW5074, or the SG-combination.
According to the research team, “SG-combination therapy caused two-hit damage in cancer cells. The first hit of the SG-combination therapy induced mitochondrial dysfunction and reactive oxygen species [ROS] generation. The second hit was the action of ROS, which facilitated the PP2A-mediated dephosphorylation of S308 phosphorylation of death-associated protein kinase (DAPK), a serine/threonine protein kinase functioning as a tumor-suppressor gene, and activated its death-causing activities. These sequential events caused by SG-combination therapy contributed to the profound cell death.”
Cha said the SG combination was not aimed at curing any specific cancer cells or the state of infection, adding that if a patient is diagnosed with phosphorylated DAPK, then they would be eligible for the new drug.
The research was published by Cancer Research medical journal in June last year, Cha said, adding that the drug has been patented in Taiwan and the US.
The drug is being tested on animals and it is in the first stage clinical trials, Cha said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching