22th July 2026 (Wednesday at 2:00 pm - 3:00 pm)

Abstract:

Many of the most widely used skeletal drugs — teriparatide (PTH), growth hormone, and the anti-sclerostin antibody romosozumab — act on bone-forming cells and the stem cells that give rise to them. Yet the tools to see where these drugs act within intact tissue have been lacking, especially in human bone, which is dense, opaque, and notoriously hard to image.

This seminar follows skeletal drug action from the receptor to the whole organ. It begins with mechanisms by which growth hormone and PTH directly regulate skeletal stem cells, including a route in which the protease MMP14 cleaves the PTH receptor and limits the response to teriparatide. It then introduces DeepBone, a tissue-clearing and light-sheet imaging platform that preserves RNA and protein in intact bone, enabling three-dimensional, molecular-resolution mapping of drug targets — including the romosozumab target sclerostin — across whole human bone-marrow samples. Finally, it outlines a path toward a “virtual bone biopsy” that combines 3D imaging with machine learning for diagnosis and for understanding skeletal disease, along with the potential to extend high-resolution 3D mapping to drug and nanocarrier delivery.

Biography:

Dr. Nelson Tsz Long Chu develops translational quantitative imaging approaches to study human skeletal biology. He obtained his BSc at The University of Hong Kong (HKU) and earned his PhD at HKU with Prof. Kathryn S.E. Cheah, where he showed inhibiting MMP14 enhances the effect of Parathyroid Hormone (PTH) treatment for osteoporosis. He then joined Karolinska Institutet as a postdoctoral fellow in Prof. Andrei S. Chagin's laboratory, integrating light-sheet microscopy with neural-network-based analysis for scalable 3D mapping of human bone microenvironments – an enabling platform for clinically oriented skeletal research. He is currently a Researcher at the University of Gothenburg and co-supervises PhD trainees. His recent work reveals a direct action of growth hormone on cartilage stem cells, providing new insight into endocrine regulation of skeletal growth with relevance to pediatric and orthopedic practice.

Details

Professor Ching-Lung Cheung
Associate Professor, Department of Pharmacology and Pharmacy

Seminar Room 1, G/F Laboratory Block,
Faculty of Medicine Building, LKS Faculty of Medicine,
The University of Hong Kong,
21 Sassoon Road, Pokfulam, Hong Kong

For enquiries, please contact Ms Yvonne Lee (vonlee@hku.hk)

All are welcome