By South China Morning Post | Created at 2025-04-05 06:01:27 | Updated at 2025-04-05 15:26:33
9 hours ago
China has unveiled its latest weapon in the battle against cancer – the world’s most powerful vaccine booster, capable of amplifying immune responses to tumours and infections up to 150-fold, according to researchers.
The advance promises two potential benefits: enhanced treatments for malignancies such as melanoma and liver cancer and improved vaccine effectiveness against rapidly mutating coronaviruses, such as the one that led to Covid-19.
This research was jointly conducted by researchers from Guangzhou’s Sun Yat-sen University, Fudan University and Liaoning University, and published in the journal Nature on March 27.
“Delivering vaccine antigens to CD8+ T cells [which are important to immune defences] requires three critical steps: cytoplasmic entry into antigen-presenting cells (APCs), APC activation and endoplasmic reticulum targeting,” said Wang Ji, a researcher with the Institute of Precision Medicine at the First Affiliated Hospital of SYSU, who is the corresponding author of the study. Wang made the remarks in an interview with China Science Daily on March 28.
The endoplasmic reticulum is often termed the cellular “highway” that links sub-cellular structures such as the nucleus and cytoplasm.
Traditional vaccine delivery resembles something akin to guiding hikers to a mountain base. But the team’s system SABER – which stands for STING Agonist-Based ER-Targeting Molecules – acts as a molecular “elevator”, bypassing cellular barriers to transport antigens directly to the ER, resolving the “last-mile” delivery challenge.
Experiments have shown that it functions like a dedicated “courier”, capable of accurately and effectively delivering antigens from the cytoplasm to the endoplasmic reticulum.
