News & Stories

Researchers from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) discovered a novel molecular mechanism that controls the delivery of a key protein in planar cell polarity (PCP) – an important process in our body that regulates cell growth and cell movement, providing useful guidance on the development of new drugs for cancer treatment.    PCP is a biological process critical for tissue development and organ function. Defects in PCP could lead to illnesses such as neurological disorder, skeletal abnormalities or congenital heart disease. Even worse, cancer cells can hijack PCP to promote their own growth and expansion.  

By Jason Chan, Lecturer, Department of Chemistry, HKUST Science is hailed by modern society as an academic discipline of strict moral grounding and high integrity. Almost every one would place some degree of trust in scientific studies as they are deemed to represent knowledge derived from empirical evidence gathered through meticulous experiments. Given its high social status, there is no doubt that people would feel inclined to trust a product or service backed up by scientific studies or claims. Unlike medical products and services that are tightly regulated by civil authorities, commercial use of scientific claims is less severely vetted. This has created a grey area for pseudoscientists, who devise clever scams that have the appearance of science but are full of errors and lies. One can learn well from a few recent (and still ongoing) examples - the alkaline diet and alkaline water scam.

Researchers at The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) have identified for the first time the culprit behind the causing of broad-spectrum bacterial resistance to peptide antibiotics - widely perceived as the last-line of defense against antibiotic-resistant bacteria, opening a new direction to the design of new drugs in tackling superbugs. The discovery – made by Chair Professor from the Division of Life Science Prof Qian Pei-Yuan and his fellow researchers, came in the best moment as the team has also discovered that this enzyme, which they identified as the cause of broad-spectrum bacteria resistance against peptide antibiotics, was actually found in not just a few, but many different strains of bacteria, sounding an alarm against persistent improper use of antibiotics.

An international multi-disciplinary research team led by scientists at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) has discovered for the first time a computational framework that could map out the fitness landscape of a crucial protein in the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), potentially paving the way for rational design of a vaccine that may force the deadly virus to mutate into forms that lead to its demise. Despite significant advances in medicine, an effective vaccine for HIV is still not available, although recent hope has emerged through the discovery of antibodies capable of neutralizing diverse HIV. The virus, however, can still evade known broadly neutralizing antibody responses via mutational pathways, which makes it all the more difficult to design an effective solution.

A research team led by Prof SUN Fei, Assistant Professor of Chemical & Biological Engineering at The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST), has created a new protein-based stimuli-responsive smart hydrogel that could open doors for future material biology and biomedical applications. Hydrogels, also known as soft matter in the medical world, are leading materials for biomedical applications such as drug delivery and stem cell therapy. But traditional hydrogels, used in products such as facial masks and contact lenses, are made up of either synthetic polymers or biological extracts such as animal collagen, are likely to cause allergies. They cannot fully mimic the complex biological environment needed for cell growth and development.

The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) hosted the 25th Anniversary Distinguished Speakers Series on 11 April, featuring Prof Emmanuelle Charpentier, inventor and co-owner of seminal intellectual property comprising the CRISPR-Cas9 technology that is revolutionizing life sciences research. In her talk titled “The Transformative CRISPR-Cas9 Technology in Genome Engineering: Lessons Learned from Bacteria”, Prof Charpentier, Director of Department of Regulation in Infection Biology at the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology, told the audience the latest development of her discoveries.  She said the RNA-programmable CRISPR-Cas9 system had recently emerged as a transformative technology in biological sciences, allowing rapid and efficient targeted genome editing, chromosomal marking and gene regulation.