MBMbio announced residency at JLABS @ Shanghai
December 1, 2021
Shanghai China, December 1, 2021 – MBMbio announced today that, effective December 1, 2021, it has become a resident of Johnson & Johnson Innovation – JLABS @ Shanghai (‘JLABS’). The company is working toward accelerating its novel RBC Liquid Biopsy technology platform and its commercialization processes.
With the advantages of high accessibility and less heterogeneity, liquid biopsy is now more popular in guiding cancer treatment, recurrence monitoring, early screening and diagnosis. At present, liquid biopsy mainly detects circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA), circulating tumor cells (CTCs), exosomes or other biomarkers derived from serum or plasma in the blood, but there are two major bottlenecks: (1) the amount of biomarkers found in serum or plasma is low and difficult to enrich, and (2) the low levels of detection sensitivity or specificity.ⁱ
The MBMbio R&D team is seeking to resolve this problem in a unique way. In vitro experiments have confirmed for the first time, that red blood cells can absorb tumor-derived nucleic acid fragments.ⁱⁱ Prospective clinical studies conducted by our team also showed the sensitivity of red blood cells to detect tumor-derived DNA is superior to the current ctDNA technology platform, especially in very early tumors. Furthermore, more abundant nucleic acid can be extracted from red blood cells than from serum. We are confident that the DNA isolated from red blood cell will become good sources of oncology biomarkers.ⁱⁱⁱ In addition to DNA, other molecules such as proteins, lipids, sugars and RNA may be exchanged between cancer cells and RBCs and may serve as diagnostic markers for subsequent research.
“Further clinical trials in larger populations is critical for RBC liquid biopsy commercialization, and we feel MBMBio’s access to world-class lab facilities could be helpful as we pursue the next step in our development efforts.” said Jackson Weiyan Zhu, the founder and CEO of MBMbio. “We are pleased to join and contribute to JLABS’ community of fellow innovators as we seek to transform our innovative technology into a product for clinical use to the benefit patients around the world.”
JLABS @ Shanghai
About MBMbio
Founded in 2016, MBMbio aims to Bridging Global Innovation in Precision Medicine. The team is dedicated to becoming a world-class commercialization platform for precision healthcare products and services, with a focus on novel cancer biomarker discovery and product development using MBMbio’s proprietary AI digital pathology and Red Blood Cell liquid biopsy platforms. MBMbio was named a Top 30 Enterprise in the 2020 China Innovation & Entrepreneurship Competition, which is China’s largest innovation and entrepreneurship competition organized by the Ministry of Science and Technology, Ministry of Finance and other national ministries and organizations.
For more information, please visit www.my-biomed.com.
References
ⁱ Liquid biopsies: Potential and challenges.(A Review), Int J Cancer. 2021 Feb 1;148(3):528-545. doi: 10.1002/ijc.33217. Epub 2020 Aug 10.PMID: 32683679 Review.
ⁱⁱ MBMbio patent:WO/2021/190124; PCT/CN2021/074035;
ⁱⁱⁱ https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.01.15.21249747v1.full
