Newswise — NEW YORK, April 28, 2011 — China Institute of Strategy and Management Lanmeng Investment Co., Ltd., and Columbia University announced today that they have entered into research and license agreements, granting worldwide exclusive rights to a portfolio of certain Columbia intellectual property that may lay the foundation for new approaches in the diagnosis and treatment of a variety of human autoimmune diseases and a wide range of other human immunologic relevant disorders.
A key feature of the human immune system is its ability to discriminate the immune responses against antigens from its own tissues and organs versus the immune responses against “nonself antigens,” which are those from any other organisms, such as infectious agents or tumors. When there is a disruption or breakdown of the mechanisms that enable this ability, the immune system attacks the body’s own tissues and organs, giving rise to autoimmune disorders such as type 1 diabetes, multiple sclerosis, thyroid disease, vitiligo, psoriasis, and rheumatoid arthritis. Specific control of such unwanted autoimmune responses without disabling normal function of the immune system during therapy is an ultimate goal in today’s medicine to treat autoimmune diseases, as well as to control rejection in organ transplantation. Accomplishing this goal requires detailed knowledge and understanding of how the immune system discriminates self from nonself, which has been considered a central conundrum in modern science for the last half century, and remained elusive.
Recently, Dr. Hong Jiang, a Chinese native and lead scientist of this project, and her collaborator, a world-renowned immunologist, Dr. Leonard Chess of Columbia University Medical Center, have made a discovery that significantly advances the understanding of how immune cells make this discrimination. Jiang and Chess have posited a theoretical model for this self versus non-self discrimination that they call, “An Avidity Model of Peripheral T Cell Regulation.” The conceptual framework of this model provides a theoretical basis for how novel therapies can be designed to selectively target only the T cells that are harbingers of autoimmunity. “For decades, autoimmune diseases have been generally treated by nonspecifically reducing overall immune response. Although this approach may ameliorate some aspects of autoimmune disease, a major side effect of the current approaches is that by also inhibiting the normal immune responses, it inevitably damages the body’s ability to eradicate infectious diseases and tumors,” said Dr. Hong Jiang, “Now we have a better understanding of the specific mechanism of how regulatory T cells discriminate between ‘self’ and ‘non-self,’ and have discovered the cellular/molecular defect associated with human autoimmune diseases that leads the self/non-self discrimination process to go awry.” Drs. Jiang and Chess hope to develop novel therapeutic strategies that will specifically and safely identify and correct the defects in patients to treat their diseases without damaging the body’s normal anti-infection and anti-tumor immunity.
“This collaboration between China and Columbia holds promise to be of great importance to medicine and to world health,” said Dr. Donald W. Landry, Chairman of Medicine at Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons.
“We believe in this original and innovative science from Columbia University,” said Mr. Wei Su, CEO of the China Institute of Strategy and Management Lanmeng Investment Co., and the director of the Chinese delegate for signing the agreement. “We are willing to take the risk of investment and management in support of the research, for the extension of people's livelihoods and well-being, to promote Sino-US friendship and cooperation in the high-tech field and for commercialization, industrialization, worldwide manufacturing, use and distribution of the immune biologics and the technology that are based on the Jiang/Chess invention.”
About Columbia University Medical CenterColumbia University Medical Center provides international leadership in basic, pre-clinical, and clinical research; in medical and health sciences education; and in patient care. The medical center trains future leaders and includes the dedicated work of many physicians, scientists, public health professionals, dentists, and nurses at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, the Mailman School of Public Health, the College of Dental Medicine, the School of Nursing, the biomedical departments of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and allied research centers and institutions. Established in 1767, Columbia's College of Physicians and Surgeons was the first institution in the country to grant the M.D. degree and is among the most selective medical schools in the country. Columbia University Medical Center is home to the largest medical research enterprise in New York City and State and one of the largest in the United States. For more information, please visit http://www.cumc.columbia.edu
About Columbia Technology VenturesColumbia University's technology transfer office, Columbia Technology Ventures, manages Columbia's intellectual property portfolio and serves as the university's gateway for companies and entrepreneurs seeking novel technology solutions. Our core mission is to facilitate the transfer of inventions from academic research to outside organizations for the benefit of society on a local, national and global basis. For more information on Columbia Technology Ventures, please visit www.techventures.columbia.edu.
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