One of the world's largest centers for clinical trials with mice, featuring advanced translational oncology platforms with fully annotated collections of patient-derived tumor graft models, will be established in Jiangsu province.

Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica under the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Crown Bioscience, a US-based oncology service company, has recently reached an agreement to form a strategic partnership focusing on translational oncology and to join forces to build the center in Taicang, Jiangsu province.

In addition to combining the existing nearly 1,000 model collections, the center will build several thousand more new models focusing on cancers affecting Asians, including liver, lung, gastric and colorectal cancers.

Tumor graft models, also known as patient-derived xenografts or PDX, are based on the transfer of primary tumors directly from the patient into a lab mouse. With the tumors derived from humans, these PDX mouse models offer a tool for researching the mechanism of cancer and developing anticancer therapies and personalized medicine for patients with cancer.

The center will expand the combined operational capacity to support global translational oncology efforts, particularly mouse clinical trials or co-trials, supporting cancer research communities, cancer hospitals and the pharmaceutical industry.

It will also use the strength of both organizations to advance PDX-based oncology platforms, to enhance the knowledge of cancer biology and to limit risk in drug development.

"As the largest government-founded research institute focusing on drug development in China, our institute aims at inventing more world-class drugs to benefit patients in China and worldwide," says Ding Jian, director of the Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica, who is a renowned cancer pharmacologist. Ding will be the center's president.