Hongchang Li

Professor

Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology (SIAT), Chinese Academy of Sciences

Short Biography

Dr. Li Hongchang is a researcher at the Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and a high-level talent of the Shenzhen Peacock Program. He is committed to using interdisciplinary technologies such as cell biology, chemical biology and nanobiology to study the mechanism of tumorigenesis and develop anti-tumor drugs. He has published more than 50 research papers in Nature Nanotechnology, Nature Chemical Biology, JACS, Cell Research, PNAS, EMBO J and other journals, applied for 16 invention patents, and presided over more than 10 national, provincial and ministerial projects, including major national science and technology projects, the National Natural Science Foundation of China, and the key projects of the Natural Science Foundation of Guangdong Province.

Presentation Topic: Directing autophagy to degrade cell surface receptors

Targeted degradation of cell membrane proteins is a new technology that emerged in 2020 and has attracted extensive attention from scientists and pharmaceutical companies around the world due to its excellent druggability and wide target adaptability. In recent years, a series of targeted degradation technologies for cell membrane proteins, represented by LYTAC, have emerged. The basic principle of these techniques is to achieve the degradation of target protein endocytosis to lysosomes with the help of lysosomal shuttle receptors on the cell membrane surface. Here, we report a novel autophagy-inducing antibody (AUTAB) based on autophagy mechanism-based targeted degradation of cell membrane proteins. By covalently conjugating autophagy-inducible molecules to cell membrane protein target antibodies, this technology enables precise triggering of degradation of cell membrane target proteins through the autophagagolysosomal pathway without relying on additional cell surface proteins. AUTAB is the first technology to use autophagy to achieve targeted degradation of cell membrane proteins, providing a new strategy for drug development targeting cell membrane proteins.