Titles and Affiliations
Warner-Lambert/Parke Davis Professor in Medicine
Professor of Medicine, Pharmacology and Medicinal Chemistry
Director, Michigan Center for Therapeutic Innovation
Director, Cancer Drug Discovery Program
University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center
Research area
Developing new therapies for breast cancer.
Impact
STAT3, a protein that regulates several genes known to cause cancer and affects cancer progression, proliferation, metastasis and drug resistance, is an attractive target for breast cancer therapy. Prior BCRF-supported research conducted by Dr. Wang and his team has led to the development of potent STAT3 degraders, which effectively inhibit tumor growth in laboratory models of triple-negative breast cancer. STAT3 degraders show no signs of toxicity even at high doses, and they exhibit potential as a new form of cancer immunotherapy.
Progress Thus Far
Dr. Wang and his team have identified a lead STAT3 degrader drug candidate called SD-1240. They found that SD-1240 works effectively as a new type of immunotherapy, shrinking tumors in laboratory models of triple-negative breast cancer, and that it strengthens the effectiveness of both existing immune checkpoint blockade therapies and standard chemotherapy when combined.
What’s next
Dr. Wang and his team plan to launch the first clinical trial testing SD-1240 in patients in 2026. In parallel, they will continue studying the drug’s effects in additional laboratory models of triple-negative breast cancer, including models grown directly from patient tumors, and work to understand exactly how the drug exerts its effects, with the goal of identifying which patients are most likely to benefit from this treatment.
Biography
Dr. Shaomeng Wang’s primary research interest is the discovery and development of novel small-molecule therapeutics for the treatment of human breast cancer and other types of cancer focusing on targeting apoptosis and epigenetics pathways. Dr. Wang has built a comprehensive drug discovery program at the University of Michigan and has advanced four novel anticancer drugs into clinical development and several additional compounds into IND-enabling studies. Dr. Wang has published over 250 manuscripts and is an inventor of more than 50 patents and patent applications.
Dr. Wang’s research program consists of three research laboratories. The computational/informatics laboratory has expertise in lead identification and lead optimization using structure-based methods and informatics. The chemistry laboratory has the capability of synthesizing complex small molecule ligands. The biology/biochemistry/pharmacology laboratory has the capability and expertise for assay development, in-depth molecular mechanism studies and evaluations of the biological activity of new compounds in relevant biochemical assays and laboratory models of human cancer, as well as in vivo pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamic analysis of these compounds.
