Research at FAST

16 Department of Applied Biology and Chemical Technology New Antibiotic Drug Candidates Dr Cong Ma won the Global Innovation Award at the TechConnect 2019 with his innovation New Antibiotic Drug Candidate , an interdisciplinary research project employing computer-aided drug discovery approaches. New antimicrobial resistance mechanisms are emerging and spreading globally, threatening human health. Dr Ma and the research team discovered small molecules with high potential to be developed into novel antimicrobial agents in the fight against superbugs. Based on a new chemical structure and groundbreaking unique antibiotic mechanism, these compounds demonstrate great bacterial growth inhibition effects yet with no toxicity to human cells. This project is now approaching pre-clinical development. These novel drug candidates could be strong complements to the current antibiotics for treating infectious diseases. In 2020, Our Achievements the Research Grants Council (RGC) also awarded Dr Ma HK$4,974,462 in support for his Collaborative Research Fund project Study of Inhibitors Targeting Bacterial RNA Polymerase Holoenzyme Formation as Novel Antimicrobial Agents . Two RGC Research Impact Fund Awarded Projects The RGC launched a new competitive research funding scheme, the Research Impact Fund, in 2018 to encourage highly impactful research and drive collaborative efforts with stakeholders beyond academia. Through an exhaustive assessment process, the RGC selected Prof. Yanxiang Zhao’s project Context-Dependent Modulation of Autophagy Pathway as Novel Complementary Approach for Cancer Therapy and awarded HK$6,184,080 in funding. This project explores whether Beclin1-targeting autophagy enhancers may have an anti-proliferative effect on cell-based and animal-based hepatocellular carcinoma models and investigates whether autophagy modulators can enhance the therapeutic efficacy of existing hepatocellular carcinoma therapies like tyrosine kinase inhibitors and monoclonal antibodies. Another Research Impact Fund project led by Dr Zhongping Yao (a 5-year project with co-principal investigators from The Chinese University of Hong Kong and The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology) entitled Data Storage and Retrieval using Peptides and Tandem Mass Spectrometry Sequencing , received HK$9,739,520 from the RGC. This project will develop peptide sequences for data storage and MS/MS-based approaches for data retrieval.