Collaboration with M4K Pharma

M4K Pharma, founded by Aled Edwards and Owen Roberts from University of Toronto, is an open source pharmaceutical company dedicated to accelerating drug discovery and development for rare childhood cancers (e.g. DIPG) through public data-sharing and effective collaboration. Since it is unique for a pharmaceutical company to share their thoughts/on-going research and internal/external meetings with the public, I have been largely inspired by the successful impacts their open approach to drug development; the best drug candidates have passed in vivo PK and tolerability tests and are currently being tested for in vivo efficacy! Working with M4K Pharma to initially validate new drug candidates for ALK2 target have been a huge privilege.

In this collaborative project, I validated 9 different M4K drug candidates on:
4 x ACVR1 Mutant (mut) / 3 x ACVR1 Wild Type (wt) / 1 x Normal Diffuse Midline Glioma (DMG) patient-derived cell lines.

These cell lines were:
– ACVR1mut: SU-DIPG-4N, SU-DIPG-36, HSJD-DIPG-007, and ICR-B181 (all 2D, laminin-coated)
– ACVR1wt: SU-DIPG-VI, SU-DIPG-33, and ICR-B184 (all 2D, laminin-coated)
– Normal: MO3.03 (2D)

[Experimental Workflow]

As a part of my talk on November 23rd 2024 at a collaborative KSEAUK (Korean Scientists and Engineers Association in the UK) x K-BioX Event at The Francis Crick Institute, I have also introduced my research and the above results. For anyone interested, here is the LINK to my LinkedIn Post. Additionally, M4K also hosts Open Scientific Update Meetings where you can see some of the results and on-going discussions highlighting their latest advancements in their ALK2 project for DIPG! Here is the LINK for anyone interested!