Avalon GloboCare Corp (NASDAQ:AVCO) has announced a new study incorporating artificial intelligence (AI)-enhanced protein design technology that could accelerate development of therapeutic monoclonal antibodies to treat cancer.
Developed by Avalon, the QTY code technology is a protein-design platform that can turn water-insoluble transmembrane receptor proteins into water-soluble proteins for use in clinical applications, including drug development.
According to New Jersey-based Avalon, the research demonstrates a novel method for quickly predicting the design of hydrophilic variant structures of the 14 glucose transport membrane proteins in cells, which allows researchers to study the proteins more easily in water.
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Glucose transport membrane proteins are deregulated in many tumor types and are a potentially important target for cancer therapy, the company noted.
The study was published in the June 2022 issue of QRB Discovery.
Dr Shuguang Zhang out of MIT’s Media lab in Boston and the rest of the team applied the QTY code to the glucose transport membrane proteins that transport sugar to cells. The team used Google's AlphaFold2, a DeepMind AI program, which can accurately and quickly predict how proteins fold. Zhang and his team used the QTY code with the open-source AlphaFold2 to predict the structures of these proteins in both their natural hydrophobic shapes and their QTY-code altered water-soluble shapes.
"This new publication with our collaborator, Professor Zhang from MIT, using the QTY code has demonstrated a novel method for quickly predicting the structures of water-soluble versions of glucose transporter proteins, which are proteins important in cancer," said David Jin, Avalon’s CEO.
Developing antibodies to treat cancer
Jin noted that the proteins are difficult to study and “poorly understood” so far.
Avalon was able to able to obtain structural information on soluble versions of the transport proteins within hours, according to Jin, whereas in the past it took four to five weeks using a high-speed computer to obtain the protein structures. Avalon believes that using the QTY code method to study water soluble variants of these transmembrane proteins and other similar proteins could have a positive impact in the field of biotechnology and cancer biology.
“These transport proteins, especially those that regulate glucose, play a vital role in the growth of cancer,” the CEO added. “We believe our method will accelerate our understanding of these proteins and the development of antibodies against them to treat cancer."
Avalon GloboCare is a clinical-stage CellTech bio-developer advancing innovative immune effector cell therapy and exosome technology.
Shares of Avalon were up 3.4% at US$0.46 in afternoon trading in New York.
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