Research

The Institute of Marine Biomedicine is a high-level scientific research institution established by Shenzhen Polytechnic University to implement the strategic plan of "adhering to the overall planning of sea and land and accelerating the building of a maritime power" proposed in the report of the 19th CPC National Congress, as well as to build "Shenzhen into a global marine center". The Institute was officially inaugurated in April 2019 and is mainly engaged in applied basic research and key technology development in the field of marine biopharmaceuticals. The long-term goal of the Institute is to research and develop class I innovative drugs from marine sources. At the same time, in order to meet the "R&D needs of industrial technology", the Institute has optimized the synthetic routes and processes of high value-added APIs and drug intermediates for major diseases such as cancer; material technologies such as functional microspheres have been developed for drug delivery, sustained release and targeting.

The Institute has established three research centers working with the two abovementioned aspects: the Marine Drug Synthesis Research Center, the Drug Chemical Biology Research Center, and the Marine Biofunctional Materials Research Center. We have formed a scientific research team led by a special guest professor of Changjiang Scholar of the Ministry of Education of PRC, a recipient of the National Outstanding Youth Fund, and a leader of the National Ten Thousand Talents Program, including 15 high-level full-time researchers, four part-time researchers, and 14 postdoctoral researchers. The Institute has excellent hardware, with instruments and equipment worth more than RMB 30 million, and a total experimental and office area of 2,200 square meters. The Institute has already received approval for four innovation platforms, namely, "Innovation Platform for the Integration of Marine Drug Industry and Education in Higher Vocational Institutions in Guangdong Province", "Shenzhen Biochemical Analysis and Testing Public Service Platform", "Shenzhen Key Laboratory for Fermentation Refining and Testing System" and "Shenzhen Public Technical Service Platform for Large-scale Cell Culture Technology and Cell Resource Bank". Since the start of its operation, the Institute has undertaken more than 30 scientific research projects of various kinds, with approved funding of about RMB 10 million. It has published more than 70 SCI papers and obtained seven authorized Chinese patents and won four teaching and research integration prizes from various competitions.

The Institute focuses on cross-disciplinary research and takes natural active small molecules as the starting point for its research. It is developing efficient synthetic methods and routes, synthesizing natural products and their family analogs in a diversified manner, and establishing a library of small molecule compounds. We have developed corresponding molecular probes with natural active small molecules, expounded the action relationship between active natural products and proteins at the molecular level, discussed the action targets of active natural products, and carried out the source innovation for small-molecule targeted drugs.