About us
Cancer Stem-cell Therapeutics Limited (CAST Ltd) is a medical biotech startup based in Hong Kong, focusing on the research and development of innovative cancer therapeutics by targeting the cancer stem cells (CSCs) and combating relapse. The startup employs its patented technology “Flavonoid dimers” to target an essential ROS-scavenger enzyme (PRDX1) in CSCs. PRDX1 overexpression causes multidrug resistance, tumor progression and metastasis. “Flavonoid dimers” can inhibit PRDX1 and chemosensitize CSCs towards conventional chemo drugs, thereby eradicating CSCs, preventing cancer relapse and prolonging disease-free survival of cancer patients.
Our Technology
Patented technology of flavonoid dimers in treating cancers. Our group has been focusing on improving the potency and pharmacokinetic of flavonoids against the ATP-binding cassette (ABC) transporter-mediated MDR while retaining their low toxicity. A bivalent approach using various length of poly(ethyleneglycol) (PEG) chains was employed to link two natural and safe apigenins together. After further structural modification, there was 68-fold improvement in potency without causing any toxicity. In order to rapidly generate a large number of diverse and dimeric modulators which have better physiochemical properties as potential drug candidates, we employed "Click Chemistry" approach. From our in-house compound library, some candidates have been proved to be good modulator to reverse drug resistance, oral cancer drug, brain cancer drug and chemosensitizer to reverse drug resistance in breast cancer stem cells (bCSCs).
Awards and participation
Silver Award
6th China International Exhibition of Inventions, 2008
Gold medal award and Special Award from the Romanian Delegation
41st annual Geneva Innovation Exhibition, 2013
A licensing agreement with Kinex Pharmaceuticals Inc.,on the commercialization of Apigenin Flavonoid Dimer in 2015
Participated PolyU Micro Fund Scheme in 2022-2023, our team was awarded out of 136 teams and obtained HKD 120K funding
Participated Hong Kong Science Technology Park: Ideation program in 2023, our team obtained HKD 100K funding
Exhibitor, BioHK2023
Our Team
Prof. Larry Ming Cheung Chow
Prof. Chow is a biochemist with over 30 years of experience in cancer research, parasitic disease research, translational research and drug development. His industrial partners include Kinex Ltd, Athenex Ltd and Aptus Therapeutics Ltd. He has collaborated with Athenex Ltd. in an UICP project which resulted in the successful approval of IND status by the USFDA in 2017.
Dr. Iris Lai King Wong
Dr. Wong is a biologist with over 15 years of experience in pre-clinical study including in vitro, in vivo efficacy study, set-up platform for high throughput drug screening, set-up cancer and parasitic disease animal models and drug resistance mechanism study.
Prof. Bill Tak Hang Chan
Prof. Chan is a medicinal chemist with over 50 years of experience in cancer research, translational research, drug discovery, drug development and medicinal chemistry. He has considerable experience in collaboration beyond academia. He had served as consultant to Dow Corning Chemicals, USA (1989‑1991), Bristol‑Myers Laboratory, Canada (1983‑1994), Darwin Pharma, Canada (2004-2006) and Viteava Pharmaceuticals Inc., Canada (2013-2016). He had received research support from pharmaceutical companies including Bristol-Myers Laboratory (Canada), Merck Frosst Co. (Canada) and Scinopharm Co. (Taiwan).
Dr. Gege Sun
Dr. Sun is a biologist with over 4 years of experience in pre-clinical study including in vitro, in vivo efficacy study, drug resistance mechanism study and cancer tumor tissue microarray.