The staff led by Dr. Yizhuo Zhang from Sun Yat-sen University Cancer Center, China, has gained the First-Class Science and Technology Award of the Chinese Anti-Cancer Association (CACA) in 2025.
Project Title: Establishment and Mechanistic Study of Novel Therapeutic Strategies for Pediatric Tumors
Project Members: Yizhuo Zhang, Suying Lu, Tong Xiang, Yi Que, Mengjia Song, Feifei Sun, Juan Wang, Yu Zhang, Mengzhen Li, Juntao Huang
Pediatric stable tumors impose a heavy healthcare burden in China and rank as the second main reason behind dying amongst youngsters. Treatment faces a number of challenges, together with low survival charges in high-risk sufferers and bottlenecks in standard chemotherapy.
Against this backdrop, the staff led by Dr. Yizhuo Zhang from the Department of Pediatric Oncology, Sun Yat-sen University Cancer Center, has achieved progressive breakthroughs:
1. Developed novel immunotherapeutic and focused methods for pediatric tumors:
- Conducted the first scientific trial of a domestically developed PD-1 antibody for pediatric tumors, demonstrating favorable security and important efficacy in some uncommon stable tumors
- Achieved excellent affected person enrollment in worldwide multicenter research of first-generation TRK inhibitors, and elaborated the drug resistance mechanism of TRK inhibitors in pediatric tumors for the first time globally
- Led Phase I/II scientific research of a domestically developed second-generation TRK inhibitor in youngsters and adolescents, accelerating the approval of latest medicine and advancing the precision prognosis and therapy of pediatric tumors in China.
2. Elucidated the mechanisms of immunotherapy resistance in pediatric tumors and established novel targeted-immunotherapy mixture regimens:
- Discovered for the first time that the CLCF1/CNTFR signaling axis is a brand new mechanism mediating immune evasion in adolescent liver most cancers, and proposed that the NET-TMCO6 axis is a promising new goal to beat immunotherapy resistance in liver tumors
- Pioneered the world’s first potential scientific examine of PD-1 antibody mixed with TKI inhibitors and chemotherapy for pediatric hepatoblastoma
- Identified the potent anti-tumor efficacy of PD-L1⁺ NK cells and efficiently translated this discovering into follow by launching a Phase I examine of GD-2 monoclonal antibody mixed with umbilical twine blood-derived NK cells for neuroblastoma (‘the king of childhood cancers’), offering a brand new mobile remedy technique for this illness.
In latest years, Dr. Zhang’s staff has printed over 60 papers in journals together with Annals of Oncology, Signal Transduction and Targeted Therapy (STTT), Cancer Research, and Hepatology, and obtained 3 licensed invention patents.
They hosted the 2022 SIOP Asia Congress and have consecutively organized 17 classes of the Frontiers in Pediatric Oncology Forum in China. Their analysis findings have been promoted and utilized in additional than 20 provinces throughout China, attracting abroad sufferers from a number of international locations to hunt medical therapy in China, benefiting each Chinese and international sufferers.
Beyond scientific analysis, the staff has conveyed the heat of drugs by means of a number of initiatives, similar to producing the microfilm Warriors, establishing ward colleges, and offering public welfare fund assist.
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