CHUNGBUK, KOREA – As the Nobel Prize winners in medicine this month brought new hope for those suffering from currently incurable diseases, developing new drugs for intractable diseases have yet again become the talk of the town. Although daunting challenges remain in terms of treatments, many scientists and researchers have long wrestled with developing new pharmaceuticals for a long, healthy life of mankind. Jin-tae Hong, the head of Innovative Cancer Treatment Research Center at Chungbuk National University, is one of a few Korean scientists who have demonstrated a remarkable performance in discovering new treatments for incurable diseases, namely cancer and Alzheimer disease.
New treatments for intractable diseases
Early this year, Prof. Hong drew great attention from the medical and pharmaceutical sector by revealing the fact that cytokine, a protein that immunocyte secretes, prevents the growth of cancer cells. IL-32 has been known as a proinflammatory cytokine that is significantly relevant to allergy, autoimmunity, and inflammatory disease. However, Prof. Hong succeeded in controlling the cancer growth of immunodeficient mice which have had transgenic cancer cell transplants, and genetically modified animals where IL-32 was significantly expressed. His research was the first identification that the growth of cancer cell was suppressed by IL-32 on the contrary.
With a joint research with Bioland, Prof. Hong also discovered methylhonokiol (MH), which demonstrated treatment effects to prevent the buildup of amyloid beta protein, a cause of dementia, during animal testing. Recently, seven of his papers relevant to the effects of MH were cited on a study by Institute of Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine, under the topic of “Methylhonokiol attenuates neuroinflammation”. Based on the review of his papers, the authors, Jürg Gertsch and Sharon Anavi-Goffer, discussed an intriguing link between the cannabinoid type-2 G protein-coupled(CB2) receptor-mediated molecular mechanisms of MH and its anti-inflammatory and protective effects in Alzheimer’s disease animal models.
The Innovative Cancer Treatment Research Center, which Prof. Hong spearheads, was the first Medical Research Center (MRC) designated by the Korean Ministry of Education, Science and Technology. The center is aiming at presenting a new treatment combined with chemotherapy and anticancer immunity treatment. The chemotherapy component is to discover materials what prevents the functions of ‘NF-Kb’ – protein that was identified as controlling gene expression relevant to survival, and propagation, and metastasis.
College of Pharmacy at Chungbuk National University
This year, the College of Pharmacy at Chungbuk National University was firstly selected as ‘Pharma-star Graduate School’ by the Ministry of Health and Welfare. Attaining a degree from this school comprises regulatory affairs, development and analysis of medicine, and pharmaceutical technology development, with a goal of fostering talents to have multidisciplinary knowledge – management, law, medicine, and veterinary science – along with hands-on experience to develop innovative new medicine. It is the only College of Pharmacy in Korea that will move to the Osong high-tech medical complex, the nation’s largest government-run project that Prof. Hong has also spearheaded. The Osong complex was designed to be a high-tech R&D complex, fostering the domestic medical industry to become a new driving force of national growth.
Prof. Hong, who previously worked for the Korea Food & Drug Administration for ten years, has to date published over 200 papers relevant to cancer and dementia treatment in international journals, and received countless awards from the government and academic sectors. Serving diverse roles as a professor, a researcher, and a government project leader, he seems to get the most from his ability to develop new treatments in the hope of preventing incurable diseases and saving more lives. “We have seen the remarkable discovery of new materials which can lead to treatment of cancer and dementia over the past years, and we hope to pave the way for new treatment to eliminate intractable diseases in the future.”
