At the invitation of professor Dachuan Yin and Associate Professor Chenyan Zhang of School of Life Sciences, Professor Shengxiang Lin from Laval University of Canada visited the School of Life Sciences from October 29th to October 30th. Prof. Shengxiang Lin gave an academic report entitled "Basic Protein Crystal Growth and application" in the west hall XA208 meeting room at 15:00 on October 29th. The report was chaired by Associate Professor Chenyan Zhang. Some teachers, doctoral students and postgraduate students from the School of Life Sciences attended the meeting. In the report, Professor Shengxiang Lin introduced the basic principles and methods of protein crystallization and some recent research advances of his research team.

At 9:30 am on October 30th, Professor Shengxiang Lin made a second academic lecture entitled "CRIF1–CDK2 interface inhibitors: an unprecedented strategy for cancer therapeutics via cell cycle and radio-sensitivity modulation" in the 102 meeting room. Professor Lin pointed out that cyclin-dependent kinases (CDKs) are very important targets for osteosarcoma treatment. CRIF1 is a direct acting factor of CDK2. Through virtual screening, four molecules were found to inhibit osteosarcoma proliferation by interfering with CRIF1-CDK2 interaction and explained a series of verification experiments performed simultaneously.

After the report, teachers and students put forward their understandings and questions to Professor Lin. Some hot issues had been discussed intensively, such as: protein purification, optimization design and considerations of crystallization methods, how to use computer virtual screening to obtain the ability to target and interfere with the core regulatory molecule CDK2 in osteosarcoma (or other tumors), a small molecule inhibitor of molecular CRIF1 interface interactions, details of methods to effectively inhibit the proliferation of osteosarcoma cells and promote apoptosis, and the development and clinical application prospects of such small molecule inhibitors. Through this report, teachers and students had enriched their academic horizons, expanded their work ideas, and benefited a lot. (Text / Ge Zhang, Chenyan Zhang; Pictures/ Xinli Liu; Review/ Yuanyuan Zhao)