Project Reference No. : C1026-18E
Project Title : Hong Kong’s participation at China Spallation Neutron Source
Project Coordinator : Xun-Li Wang
Institution : City University of Hong Kong
Layman Summary
Neutron scattering is a powerful and versatile method to characterize the structure and dynamics of materials. Over time, it has made enormous impact in many areas of physics, chemistry, biology, materials science, and materials engineering. China Spallation Neutron Source (CSNS), located in Dongguan, provides unprecedented opportunities for the scientific community in the Greater Bay Area, encompassing Hong Kong, Macau, Shenzhen, and Guangzhou. CSNS produced its first neutron beam on August 27, 2017. Overtime, it is destined to become an international hub for materials research. This proposal supports Hong Kong’s participation at CSNS. The ability to access CSNS will significantly enhance education and research activities in Hong Kong, and encourage rapid growth of a strong user community, to take advantage of state-of-the-art facilities at CSNS for scientific discovery and technology development.
Project Reference No. : C4041-18E
Project Title : A state-of-the-art X-ray diffraction facility for structural biology research in Hong Kong
Project Coordinator : Professor WONG Kam-bo
Institution : The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Layman Summary
X-ray crystallography is an essential tool to understand how life works by revealing the molecular structures of biomolecules that provide insights into the mechanism of cellular processes. In this project, we have gathered a team including all major structural biologists from local universities and will install a state-of-the-art detector to the strongest in-house X-ray generator in Hong Kong. The X-ray diffraction shared facility will allow researchers to tackle the most challenging problems and will further promote research excellence and collaboration in Hong Kong.
Project Reference No. : C4057-18E
Project Title : A nanochannel-based next-generation mapping system for the study of complex genomic feature and variation for biotechnological and biomedical applications
Project Coordinator : Professor CHAN Ting-fung
Institution : The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Layman Summary
Next-generation mapping, also known as optical mapping, is a high-throughput single-molecule imaging technique that captures specific labeling patterns along DNA molecules of sizes going from 200 kbp to over 1 Mbp. It has emerged as a complementary technology to sequencing-based methods in improving the completeness and contiguity of genome sequences of many agronomically important species. It has also been used in disease analysis such as detection of large structural changes in cancer genomes. We are among the first groups in the world to develop computational methods for the analysis of this novel data type. We have identified novel genomic regions and discovered structural variations in the human genome, particularly those that are otherwise difficult to resolve with sequencing-based methods. The main goal of this project is to continue our initial successes and maintain our competitiveness by acquiring the latest nanochannel-based optical mapping system. Our team consists of both local researchers and international collaborators, we will promote this technology to researchers in Hong Kong and nearby regions for high-impact collaborative research. New technology brings about new discoveries; this new system will greatly contribute to the research community.
Project Reference No. : C5029-18E
Project Title : Acquisition of a sub-angstrom and ultralow-dose cryogenic transmission electron microscopy facility for beam-sensitive materials research
Project Coordinator : Professor Lau Shu Ping
Institution : The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Layman Summary
The objective of this proposal is to establish a low dose aberration-corrected cryo-Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) facility that can reliably characterize the pristine structure of beam-sensitive materials with prohibited beam effects. The proposed TEM facility will combine the sub-angstrom resolution from the aberration corrector with the emerging technologies including (1) the cryo-transfer holder to lower sample temperature to diminish radiolysis and heating effects, (2) low-voltage imaging to reduce the energy of incident electrons and the associated knock-on damage, (3) the direct-detection electron-counting camera with ultrahigh sensitivity and speed, enabling low-dose imaging with low beam-current density and ultrafast acquisition. Even though there have been pioneering works applying one of the above techniques onto beam-sensitive materials, demonstrating their importance and great potential, a specialized TEM combining all these techniques to prevent major beam effects has not yet been available in Hong Kong and even in mainland China. Setting up this unique TEM facility will substantially expand the types of materials that can be studied by aberration corrected TEM, and grant Hong Kong a great advantage to lead the research and development on novel beam-sensitive materials.
Project Reference No. : C7050-18E
Project Title : SIRMS 2.0: Establishing Asia’s premier stable isotope ratio mass spectrometry laboratory in Hong Kong
Project Coordinator : Professor K.M.Y. Leung
Institution : The University of Hong Kong
Layman Summary
Stable isotope analysis (SIA) is one of the most versatile tools in interdisciplinary science. The isotopes of an element take the same place in the periodic table of the element. Therefore, they are involved in the same physical, chemical and biological reactions. However, they vary in their mass due to a different number of neutrons in the nucleus. This difference in mass results in different reaction rates and ultimately drives variation in the ratio of the heavy and light isotopes in the reaction products. Measuring the distribution of stable isotopes in the natural environment or by using stable isotope tracers in experiments can elucidate reaction pathways, key biochemical processes, and sources and sinks of matter.
SIA found its first applications in the field of earth science. Notably, the reconstruction of Earth’s climate from ice cores revealed anthropogenic carbon dioxide as a correlate of global warming. Today, many more disciplines have developed applications of SIA. For example, ecologists apply SIA to reconstruct food webs in different ecosystems, while oceanographers use this tool to unravel the biogeochemistry of carbon and nitrogen in the ocean. SIA can also be used to trace the source of food products for supporting food safety surveillance, and identify human gastrointestinal diseases and doping in sports. In forensics, SIA can determine the origin of explosives, drugs, illegal wildlife and even victims of kidnapping and homicide.
Since 2008, the Stable Isotope Ratio Mass Spectrometry laboratory (SIRMS) at HKU has supported a myriad of research projects, particularly in marine ecology and environmental science. As technology has tremendously improved over time, this project aims to upgrade the aging facilities to ‘SIRMS 2.0’ so as to achieve higher accuracy and higher sample throughput at a lower cost. With the new facilities, this project also aims to increase the user base with a broader range of disciplines, including but not limited to forensics, medicine and metabolomics. As such, SIRMS will become the premier regional centre for interdisciplinary stable isotope research and education.
Group Research Proposals
Project Reference No. : C1031-18G
Project Title : Multi-sourced Event Detection and Multi-Dimensional Analysis based on Event Cube
Project Coordinator : Professor Li Qing
Institution : The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Layman Summary
Social media plays a vital role in affecting public opinions and policy making. The publicly available data such as the massive and dynamically updated social media data streams (also known as “big data”) covers the various aspects of social activities, personal views and expressions. This points to the importance of understanding and discovering the knowledge patterns underlying the big data, and the need of developing methodologies to this end, particularly to discover real-world events from such big data. Hong Kong being a major city and a most significant financial center, effectively and efficiently acquiring, mining, and managing the big data will be critical to her decision-making for not only the business and service sectors, but also for the government at the macro-level. This project aims to provide insight on event detection and prediction underlying the big data. We propose to develop techniques for untargeted event detection (UED) in bottom-up fashion, and targeted event detection (TED) from multi-sourced data in top-down manner. A novel “event cube” model is to be devised to support various event queries and analysis thereon. To show the effectiveness of TED coupled with UED, we shall take suicide prediction of the youngsters (particularly, college/university students) in Hong Kong as an example application.
Project Reference No. : C4001-18G
Project Title : Targeting Epstein-Barr virus in nasopharyngeal carcinoma: from mechanistic study to novel therapeutic development
Project Coordinator : Professor LO Kwok-wai
Institution : The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Layman Summary
Nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) has an unusually high incidence among southern Chinese and affects a relatively young population in our community. This unique epithelial cancer is highly invasive and metastatic. High mortality rates of NPC highlight the urgent need for new effective treatment interventions for the patients. As a consistent feature of NPC in endemic regions, the persistent Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) infection has been shown as a critical molecular driver in NPC development. The unique viral-cell interaction strongly suggests that targeting EBV is an efficient approach to cure this deadly malignant disease. By exploiting the recent established EBV-positive NPC models, we will unveil the vulnerability to EBV latent gene inhibition and underlying molecular mechanisms for the switching of infection program from latent to lytic cycle, thereby designing effective inhibitors targeting viral latent proteins and developing novel oncolytic therapeutic strategies. The project will contribute significant impact to the control of this common cancer.
Project Reference No. : C4045-18W
Project Title : Deciphering Enhancer Regulation of Tumor Immune Evasion to Develop New Combination Immunotherapies
Project Coordinator : Professor CHENG Alfred Sze-lok
Institution : The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Layman Summary
Understanding of cancer epigenome provides new opportunities to rewire transcriptional programs that drive hallmark tumor traits. Supported by a Collaborative Research Fund in 2015, the present investigative team has intensely researched and reported on aberrant chromatin modifications of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) associated with hepatitis B virus and non-alcoholic fatty acid disease. In spite of having achieved substantial progress, new avenues have stemmed that necessitate addressing in order to fully exploit the epigenetic vulnerabilities for therapeutics. In this renewal application, we sought continual support to embark on new areas of research that are aimed to empower cancer immunotherapy, which harnesses the patient’s own anti-tumor immunity. Transcriptional enhancers are distal regulatory elements that drive lineage-specific gene expressions. Genetic and epigenetic alterations of these non-coding sequences have emerged as common molecular traits of various human cancers. Recent high-dimensional omics studies in HCC have emphasized on much importance for the strong immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment that counteracts the activation and infiltration of cytotoxic T lymphocytes into the tumor. In this proposal, we hence intend to broaden our investigative scope from HCC cell epigenetics to enhancer regulation of tumor immune evasion. Based on our discoveries, we will develop mechanism-based combination immunotherapies that are supported by pharmacological proof-of-concept using preclinical models. The continual support will allow this dedicated group of researchers to continue our synergistic interactions in combating HCC.
Project Reference No. : C4063-18G
Project Title : A Robotic Wireless Capsule Endoscopic System for Automated Gastrointestinal Disease Diagnosis
Project Coordinator : Professor MENG Max Qing-hu
Institution : The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Layman Summary
Gastrointestinal (GI) tract diseases, especially in the stomach, small intestine and colon, pose the greatest threat to the public health in Hong Kong. Among the top ten cancers reported by Hong Kong Cancer Registry, colorectal cancer has been ranked No. 1 since 2013 and stomach cancer is always on the list, ranked No. 6. Although the prevalence of small intestine diseases is relatively low, Hong Kong ranked third out of eight Asian locations in terms of the incidence rate of inflammatory bowel disease. In the last decades, wireless capsule endoscopy (WCE) has been widely used for diagnostic inspection of the GI tract. Compared with a conventional endoscope, it offers a non-invasive solution to enable physicians to explore the whole GI tract with direct visualization. However, the current WCE procedure is firstly time-consuming, which takes about 8-24 hours for inspection. Secondly, it imposes heavy workload to physicians, which costs about 2 hours of manual diagnosis for one patient. Thirdly, it gives a false negative diagnosis which means about 75% of the second WCE examination shows new findings and about 63% of these new findings will change the final decision. In this project, we are going to develop a robotic WCE system to improve both the accuracy and efficiency of disease diagnosis. Specifically, the robotic WCE system is identified by three innovative functions: active locomotion, real-time localization, and automatic diagnosis. All these functions will be validated through both animal and human trials. The active locomotion will control the movement of the WCE, enabling a focused view on recognized lesion point and accelerating the moving speed at normal regions to save the diagnosis time. The real-time localization will not only provide the absolute location of the WCE but also the relative location with respect to GI tract landmarks, benefiting physicians with a more accurate diagnosis. The automatic diagnosis will automatically recognize lesions from the captured images, saving the physicians’ workload and time. The success of this project will not only advance knowledge in terms of high impact publications but also create opportunities for knowledge and technology transfer to local hospitals and medical industrial partners through a start-up company. These will ultimately help to improve public health and related services in Hong Kong and to promote Hong Kong towards a center of excellence for research and innovations.
Project Reference No. : C5026-18G
Project Title : Multi-stage Big Data Analytics for Complex Systems: Methodologies and Applications
Project Coordinator : Professor Cao Jiannong
Institution : The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Layman Summary
Recently, big data has expanded rapidly and its applications in areas such as logistics, transportation and finance continue to grow, thereby taking a central position in our economy and society. Existing big data analytic methods are generally single-stage methods, meaning that they treat the system under study as an atomic entity with all its data directly available for analysis. However, most systems under study are complex, consisting of separable but interdependent subsystems, which are difficult to handle by existing single-stage methods. This brings new challenges and opportunities in all phases of data analytics including data collection, feature learning, model learning and application.
In this project, we focus on developing new methodologies for multi-stage big data analytics on complex systems that address the challenges brought up by the diverse requirements, high dependency and correlated objectives of the subsystems. Specifically, we target at investigating four major tasks: 1) joint data collection; 2) joint feature learning; 3) joint model learning; and 4) the application of the proposal in the food supply chain system.
This collaborative research is expected to generate new methodologies for multi-stage big data analysis on complex systems. An application demo will also be developed in the food supply chain system for performance evaluation through analyzing various food safety issues. The research on this project will place HK in a leading place in the field of big data analytics.
Project Reference No. : C5037-18G
Project Title : High Performance Photovoltaic Cells Integrating Perovskite and Polymers – Materials, Devices and Mechanism Studies
Project Coordinator : Dr Gang Li
Institution : The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Layman Summary
Renewable energy is crucial for sustainable economic development and environmental protection. Within all the renewable energy resources, solar energy plays a key role in solving the terawatt (TW) energy challenge the world is facing today, because of the abundance and ultimate environmental friendly nature. The pursuit of cost-effective and high performance solar photovoltaic technologies has attracted tremendous effort in the academic and industrial world.
The organo metal-halide perovskite solar cell (PSC) has shown tremendous progresses with the power conversion efficiency (PCE) boosting from 3.8% to 23 % in less than 10 years. The stability is the major obstacle for the new technology. Organic polymer solar cells (OPV) efficiency of over 15% has also been reported with excellent stability, and the two technologies have great potential to joint force for high efficiency, high stability and low cost. In this collaborative research, we propose a synergetic research plan to systematically investigate key fundamental issues in novel solar cells integrating perovskite and conjugated polymers. The synergetic team research plan is to push the new integrated perovskite-polymer device efficiency to 26%, with significant stability improvement over the state-of-the-art perovskite solar cells. The success of the project will contribute to Hong Kong’s science and technology leadership, national energy security and a greener economy by offering new research directions critical to future breakthrough in low cost high efficiency and stable advanced solar cells. It will play critical role in the commercialization of the novel solution processed PV technology, also offer a broad spectrum of research and educational opportunities for students and postdocs.
Project Reference No. : C6013-18G
Project Title : Non-Hermitian Systems in Optics and Acoustics
Project Coordinator : Prof Li, Jensen Tsan Hang
Institution : The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
Layman Summary
In this project, we aim to investigate how non-Hermitian physics can be used to manipulate wave propagation in both optical and acoustic systems. Absorption loss in optics and acoustics is usually undesirable as many interesting wave propagation phenomena disappear when the system is too lossy. Yet, recent explorations of loss and gain within the framework of non-Hermitian systems counterintuitively predict important roles for the loss and gain in wave propagation due to the appearance of the so-called exceptional points, at which the eigenvalues and eigenvectors coalesce. These exceptional points affect the system response in peculiar and sensitive ways when we either sweep across or encircle these points in the phase space. As such principle is very generic, potential applications of non-Hermitian physics are virtually limitless, with some that are particularly promising such as enhanced sensing, laser-mode selection, and unidirectional invisibility. The above goals will be achieved by exploring new geometric structures of exceptional points, metasurfaces equipped with exceptional points and dynamically tunable non-Hermitian systems.
Project Reference No. : C6030-18G
Project Title : A Human-Powered Machine Learning System
Project Coordinator : Prof Chen Lei
Institution : The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
Layman Summary
Among the recent rapid developments in machine learning that have revolutionized our daily life, the most striking has been Google’s Deep Mind project where a neural network defeated top human professionals at go. Besides Alpha Go, self-driving cars, Siri, online recommendations sites such as Netflix and Amazon and many other real-world applications have emerged and brought great benefits to humanity. These applications show that machines are appear significantly intelligent if they are suitably trained. However, machine learning performance relies strongly on the quality of the training datasets and can be restricted by the cognitive nature of a task. Tasks such as recognizing objects from blurred images and understanding sentiment from complicated and poorly-structured sentences in tweets remain challenging. At this stage the limitations of unadulterated machine learning still call for external assistance. Therefore, in this study we propose to develop a human-powered machine learning (HPML) arrangement which will seamlessly incorporate human intelligence into the whole process of machine learning. Humans will interact to assist training, tuning and testing algorithms. They will integrate results and re-feed them back into the training algorithms to improve accuracy, reduce cost and shorten latency. We will seek solutions to the five key challenges in building HPML—data preparation, incentive design, task assignment, solution quality control and privacy protection. We will build a prototype system based on the techniques developed as a platform for verifying their effectiveness in various HMPL applications.
Project Reference No. : C7017-18G
Project Title : Development of the glycosylated adiponectin collagenous domain as potential therapeutic agents for cancer and non-alcoholic fatty liver
Project Coordinator : Professor X.C. Li
Institution : The University of Hong Kong
Layman Summary
Adiponectin is a circulating hormone produced from adipose tissue. It is a key regulator of fatty acid oxidation and lipid metabolism in the liver and skeletal muscles. Low production of adiponectin is involved in the pathogenesis of insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes, steatohepatitis, cardiovascular diseases and certain types of cancers. Thus, adiponectin supplementation could be a highly beneficial approach with therapeutic potentials for metabolic, cancer and cardiovascular diseases. To counter the problem of difficulties in producing full-length human adiponectin, we aim to identify the minimal active adiponectin structure capable of eliciting the required pharmacological agonist activities and develop adiponectin-based glyco-peptidomimetics for potential therapeutic applications.
Project Reference No. : C7026-18G
Project Title : Exploiting stemness as a cancer cell vulnerability using hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) as a model system
Project Coordinator : Dr. S.K.Y. Ma
Institution : The University of Hong Kong
Layman Summary
Tumors are composed of non-homogeneous cell populations exhibiting varying degrees of genetic and functional heterogeneity. Cancer stem cells (CSCs) are capable of sustaining tumors by manipulating genetic and non-genetic factors to metastasize, resist treatment, and maintain the tumor microenvironment. Understanding the key traits and mechanisms of CSC survival provides opportunities to improve patient outcomes via improved prognostic models and therapeutics. We and others have gathered ample evidence to show that tumor growth of the locally prevalent cancer type Hepatocellular Carcinoma (HCC) is also fueled by CSCs. Our past research on the identification and characterization of liver cancer stem cells have made several novel and important findings with some of the work resulting in successful patent applications and commercial licenses. These exciting findings provoke us to propose a multi-disciplinary team to study how stemness can be exploited as a cancer cell vulnerability. Efforts are directed at conducting both basic and pre-clinical studies using a combination of molecular, cellular, biochemical, genetics and disease modeling approaches. New knowledge gained from findings of this study will define new opportunities for innovative treatments of HCC targeted at the important liver CSC subset, which is believed to represent the root of cancer.
Project Reference No. : C7030-18G
Project Title : Exploiting the true joint progenitor cell for articular cartilage repair
Project Coordinator : Professor D. Chan
Institution : The University of Hong Kong
Layman Summary
Articular cartilage facilitates the frictionless motion of synovial joints. However, once damaged from trauma or excessive loading in daily use, repair is very poor leading to osteoarthritis (OA), which leads to a huge medical and social burden. One reason for poor cartilage repair is a limited number of stem/progenitor cells. Many cartilage and progenitor cell types have been assessed in clinical trials for therapeutic repairs with some success, but long-term outcomes are not satisfactory. This is because we are not using the correct cells for repair, and we should be looking at cells that make the original articular cartilage in embryonic development. Here, we identified in mouse development, a population of joint progenitor cells that are destined to become cells of a young articular cartilage, and propose they are the “true” progenitor cells for repair. Our goal is to gain a full understanding of these cells and to generate equivalent human progenitor cells to exploit their cartilage regenerative capacity. We will also introduce exciting features to these cells for the potential to generate a universal source of progenitor cells suitable for all patients. To achieve this, we will use the most cutting-edge technologies to include an “immuno-cloaking” system, making these cells “invisible” and “untouchable” by the host immune system, but also to provide a safe guard, such that if any cells become tumorigenic, they can be “killed”. The successful implementation of this project will provide an innovative therapeutic strategy with “of-the-shelf” cells to repair damaged joints, improving the quality of life for millions of patients with degenerative joint diseases.
Project Reference No. : C7052-18G
Project Title : Infrastructures of Faith: Religious Mobility on the Belt and Road
Project Coordinator : Dr. D.A. Palmer
Institution : The University of Hong Kong
Layman Summary
This project will investigate the following research question: what is the religious impact of China’s intensification of ties and infrastructures linking it to the rest of Asia, now subsumed under the label of the “Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)”? An unintentional effect of the BRI is to facilitate and intensify religious circulations between the nations of Eurasia. Religion is central to the culture and national identity of most BRI and adjacent countries, and, often, their political system and ideology as well. The project will form an international, interdisciplinary team of scholars in anthropology, geography, sociology, history, political science and religious studies, who will conduct workshops and case studies on transnational religious circulations between China and Asian countries relating to Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, Chinese religion and new religious movements, that will be situated within broader historical and geopolitical contexts. This will combine both a macro-level mapping of the broad routes of religious circulation, and specific studies related to each major region and religious tradition, focusing on routes, borders, and urban hubs. The project will develop critically needed expertise for Hong Kong, China and Asia on the religious dimensions of BRI ties and their implications for relations with the Chinese world, with applications in the fields of public policy, education, and intercultural and interreligious understanding. The outputs of the project will create a critical mass of scholarship that will become a foundational reference for reshaping the social scientific study of religion in China and Asia, and the geographical and geopolitical study of Asia.
Project Reference No. : C7058-18G
Project Title : Elucidating the Mechanism of De Novo Centromere Formation
Project Coordinator : Dr. K.W.Y. Yuen
Institution : The University of Hong Kong
Layman Summary
Centromere is a specialized chromosomal region that directs accurate chromosome separation in cell division. Centromere position is usually maintained through cell cycles and generations. Yet, new centromere can be formed occasionally with chromosomal rearrangements, causing chromosome instability, as in some cancers. Centromere repositioning can occur during evolution of closely related species. Despite the importance of centromere formation in diseases and evolution, it has been challenging to capture the centromere establishment event in real time due to its low occurrence frequency.
Here, we have developed an in vivo, real-time imaging system in the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans to study the dynamics and mechanism of de novo centromere formation. We will construct worm artificial chromosomes with different DNA composition and compare their centromeres. In addition, we will synthesize histones with specific modifications in vitro to analyze centromeric nucleosomes biochemically. This interdisciplinary work, combining cell biology, biochemistry, synthetic biology, chemical biology, genomic and proteomic approaches, will elucidate the cellular mechanism for centromere establishment and the epigenetic and DNA sequence requirements. Our results can also lead to improved artificial chromosome design with higher centromere establishment frequency, which can be used as a stable, large-capacity cloning vector, independent of endogenous chromosomes, for gene therapy and biotechnology research applications.
Project Reference No. : C7064-18G
Project Title : Next-Generation Air Pollution Physics and Chemistry Model for Urban Areas
Project Coordinator : Dr. C.H. Liu
Institution : The University of Hong Kong
Layman Summary
Gaussian models are well received in the industry for decades to estimate pollutant plume dispersion in the atmospheric boundary layer (ABL). Its development is based on flat, rural terrain in which the major components, dispersion coefficients, are largely determined as functions of thermal stratification. Urbanization changes ground features and surface roughness, increasing wind shear. The transport processes are thus governed by the mechanically produced turbulence kinetic energy instead of the buoyancy-generated one. Pollutant mixing and chemical reactions are subsequently affected, altering the secondary pollutant formation and ultrafine particle condensation/evaporation. Hence, the conventional Gaussian models must be applied cautiously for urban setting.
To bridge the knowledge gap, this project is conceived to elucidate the dynamics and pollution physics/chemistry over urban areas by consolidating the expertise and resources from three local universities. Mathematical modeling, laboratory experiments and field measurements will be sought concurrently to advance our scientific accomplishment and fundamental understanding of how, in the framework of Monin-Obukhov similarity theory (MOST), the turbulence length scale is modified by the aerodynamic resistance of urban surfaces and its influence on reactive plume dispersion. The detailed flows, transport and chemical kinetics will be examined by both large-eddy simulation (LES) and laboratory wind tunnel results in a complementary manner. Apart from idealized roughness elements, selected realistic urban models of Hong Kong downtown areas will be studied, facilitating the verification by field campaigns. The roughness sublayer (RSL), apparent dispersion coefficient (AσM) and pollution source depletion (AQM) constitute the non-computational-fluid-dynamics (non-CFD) model prototypes for reactive plume dispersion over urban areas. The aforementioned technical core therefore archives datasets, refining the dispersion coefficients as functions of ABL conditions, chemical composition and urban morphology. Latest findings will be shared with society, gathering feedback for user-experience improvement. The newly developed non-CFD models, which retain the advantage of Gaussian models over CFD, will be employed for extensive scenario analyses to encourage public engagement. This cross-disciplinary approach will take Hong Kong as a platform to showcase a systematic solution to diagnose and rectify urban air quality problems in a holistic manner.
This project will arouse the scientific community by the unprecedented findings of reactive plume dispersion over urban areas. The non-CFD models will be user friendly, providing quick and reliable estimate for regulatory purposes, policy innovation and environmental management strategy. The research output will address our utmost practical concern: Continuously ameliorate the conventional Gaussian models for reliable large-scale sensitivity tests of urban air quality.
Project Reference No. : C7065-18G
Project Title : Identification and characterization of genes and microenvironment factors driving the metastasis of upper gastrointestinal tract cancers
Project Coordinator : Professor X. Guan
Institution : The University of Hong Kong
Layman Summary
Upper gastrointestinal tract cancers (UGICs), including esophageal cancer and gastric cancer, are among the most common cancers and the leading cause of cancer death worldwide. Metastasis are the major cause of cancer-related deaths. Therefore, a better understanding of the molecular mechanisms underlying UGIC metastasis is essential for the development of new treatments that might lead to improved survival of UGIC patients. Cancer metastasis is a very complicated process with multiple steps involving genetic changes, cancer stem cells and cancer microenvironment. In this proposal, we plan to study three metastasis-related issues: the relationship between genetic change and metastasis; how tumor microenvironment affects metastasis; and the role of cancer stem cells in metastasis. Based on our DNA and RNA sequencing data in 4 esophageal cancer cases and 8 gastric cancer cases, several hundred genes will be studied in a large amount of tumor samples to identify key metastasis related genes. Functional experiments will be then used to study these genes to explore their roles in UGICs metastasis. The tumor microenvironment (TME), describes the non-cancerous cells, such as fibroblast and macrophage present in the tumor. Increasing evidences indicate that TME plays very important roles in cancer development and progression, including metastasis. Our previous studies have demonstrated that cancer-associated fibroblast (CAF) and tumor-associated macrophage (TAM) can promote cancer metastasis by secreting some factors. In this study, we will further investigate these factors to reveal their effects in metastasis. Cancer recurrence can be preceded by an interlude, termed tumor dormancy that can last several years without clinical symptoms. Although dormant cells are the origins of cancer metastasis and recurrence, the molecular mechanisms underlying dormancy maintenance and interruption emerging are far from clear. In this study, we will focus on the role of cancer stem cells in dormant tumor maintenance and how a dormant tumor cancer be activated as a growing tumor. Successful completion of this project has long-term implication for the development of new therapeutic method for UGIC treatment.