Dr Parco Siu Ming-fai, Assistant Professor of PolyU’s Department of Health Technology and Informatics, has recently been honoured by the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) with the 2012 Visiting Scholar Award. He was previously presented the ACSM New Investigator Award in June last year.

Founded in 1954, ACSM is the largest sports medicine and exercise science organization in the world with more than 45,000 members from 90 countries around the globe.

After the postdoctoral training at Harvard Medical School, Dr Siu joined PolyU in 2006 and has been studying the cellular and molecular mechanisms of skeletal muscle atrophy and cardiac muscle cell death. His research findings have contributed to identifying the molecular therapeutic targets for muscle ageing, muscular dystrophy, heart disease and heart failure. The understanding in the detailed mechanism of muscle diseases will help explore new effective treatments.

The loss of muscle mass and strength with ageing has been a considerable healthcare problem for the elderly. On average humans lose 1-2% of muscle mass and strength per year after the age of 50 (i.e., the decline in muscle mass and strength reaches 20-40% by the age of 70). Although there is currently no effective remedy to prevent muscle loss with ageing, Dr Siu suggested having regular exercise and adequate nutritional intake can slow down the process of muscle loss.

Supported by the Visiting Scholar Award, Dr Siu will visit the Transgenic Mouse Core Laboratory of Chang Gung University, Taiwan to pursue advancement of his muscle research by incorporating the state-of-the-art transgenic technology.