Heart failure is a major independent risk factor for premature morbidity and mortality, with over 4 million patients affected in China and up to 4.8 million in the United States . Current therapeutic approaches are indirect and aimed at reducing the workload of the failing heart or treating the consequences of heart failure, such as fluid retention. However, no therapies are currently available that directly enhancing the structure and function of myocardial cells.

Zensun has discovered what it believes is the first therapy to directly improve cardiac performance without adversely affecting myocardial metabolism or inducing arrhythmias. This is based on its research demonstrating that ErbB4 receptor-activation by neuregulin has very important effects on heart-function. ErbB4 is a member of the epidermal growth factor receptor-family that upon binding to neuregulin forms an activated receptor-signaling complex with ErbB2, a complex that is critical for the maintenance of normal myocardial cell structure and function. Based on these findings, Zensun has developed an ErbB4 peptide mimetic ( NEUCARDIN^TM) for the treatment of heart failure, and patents for NEUCARDIN^TM and its application as an innovative therapy for heart failure have already been granted in China, with additional patents having also been submitted in other major parts of the world including the United States, Europe and Japan.

The research praised by Dr. Paul M. Vanhoutte, General Secretary of the International Union of Pharmacology, as “a revolution in the treatment of heart diseases”. NEUCARDIN^TM promises to change traditional heart failure management by providing a treatment that uniquely improves the structure and function of myocardial cells, and by so doing, the physiological function of the heart. Such therapy, it is hoped, will markedly improve quality of life in patients afflicted with heart failure and may even improve survival and reduce medical costs, a major socioeconomic issue, since patients with heart failure require frequent and recurrent hospitalization, which is extremely expensive.

Cell experiments show that NEUCARDIN^TM can improve the impaired structure of myocardial cells induced by serum starvation or by the chemotherapeutic, doxorubicin, strengthen intercalated disc connections, and improve their biological function. In addition, in vivo studies in intact animals demonstrate that NEUCARDIN^TM can effectively improve heart pump function in a variety of acute and chronic heart failure models. In these studies, NEUCARDIN^TM strengthens myocardial contractile performance and reduces the extent of ischemic and hypoxic damage, resulting in improved heart failure treatment. In addition, combined with drugs currently available for heart failure, NEUCARDIN^TM results in further improvements in survival.

A phase I clinical trial of NEUCARDIN^TM has already been completed in 80 normal subjects. These studies indicate that NEUCARDIN^TM is well tolerated and without major side-effects, “an outcome” that Professor Robert M. Graham, Executive Director of the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute in Australia and a member of Zensun's Scientific Advisory Board, noted, “is a major milestone in the development of this potentially revolutionary new treatment for heart failure, with enormous ramifications for the well-being of the many millions of heart failure sufferers world-wide”.

Breast cancer is a major cause of death in woman world-wide. It is the second most common malignancy in Chinese women and the most common cancer for North American women, with a death rate second only to that of lung cancer. Current therapies for this devastating malignancy include operational excision, chemotherapy, radiotherapy and hormonal therapy. In recent years, biological therapies have also emerged, including the use of humanized antibodies directed against proteins expressed abundantly on the surface of breast cancer cells, such as the ErbB2 receptor. However, such therapies are hampered by the development of significant side-effects, particularly the development of heart failure.

Zensun has developed a novel biotechnology that obviates this side-effect while preserving therapeutic benefit. This innovation is based on the finding that in breast cancer cells the ErbB2 receptor mediates its cancer cell growth-effects by pairing up not with another ErbB2 molecule, but with a related protein, ErbB3. By utilizing a portion of the ErbB3 molecule to induce the formation of antibodies against the ErbB3 receptor it should be possible to shut down breast can cancer cell growth without affecting heart function, which involves a pairing of ErbB2 with a different ErbB receptor protein, ErbB4. And indeed such an approach has already been shown by Zensun's scientists to be highly effective in animal models of breast cancer. Based on these discoveries, Zensun has been awarded patents for these technologies in China, with related patent applications also currently being under evaluation in the United States, Europe and Japan .

Zensun scientists have shown that specific pieces of the ErbB3 receptor can actively induce antibody production, also called humoral immunity, and that these antibodies inhibit the growth of breast cancer tumors. Based on these studies, Zensun has successfully developed a recombinant human ErbB3 fragment (rhErbB3-f), as a therapeutic tumor vaccine. Further, rhErbB3-f shows synergistic effects when co-administered with conventional chemotherapeutics, such as cisplatin, adriamycin and cyclophosphamide. At present, rhErbB3-f is undergoing phase I clinical trials testing.