Memberships & Editorships

Memberships:

• American Association for the Advancement of Science
• American Chemical Society
• American Diabetes Association Professional Section
• American Heart Association Professional Section
• American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
• American Society for Pharmacology & Experimental Therapeutics
• British Pharmacological Society
• Hong Kong Pharmacology Society
• New Zealand Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology

 

Editorships:

• American Journal of Translational Research
• Journal of Integrated Omics
• Cardiovascular Pharmacology
• Journal of Pharmaceutics & Pharmacology
• PLOS ONE

Honours and Awards

• 2021 Faculty Outstanding Research Output Award, LKS Faculty of Medicine, the University of Hong Kong
• 2020 Outstanding Research Output Prize, LKS Faculty of Medicine, the University of Hong Kong
• 2019 中华医学科技奖医学科学技术二等奖-糖尿病发病机制和诊疗关键技术的研究与应用 (201902258P1004), 中华医学会
• 2019 Nominated to present the Paul M. Vanhoutte lecture in MOVD/EDH2019
• 2018 Research Output Prize, LKS Faculty of Medicine, the University of Hong Kong
• 2016 Research Output Prize, LKS Faculty of Medicine, The University of Hong Kong
• 2014 National Science and Technology Awards of Advanced Individual, Shenzhen Virtual University Park
• 2012 Research Output Prize, The University of Hong Kong
• 2011 Universitas 21 Fellowship, The University of Hong Kong
• 2011 Outstanding Young Researcher Award, The University of Hong Kong
• 2010 Research Output Prize, The University of Hong Kong

• Ageing is an unavoidable part of life, but a modifiable process. For the first time in history, most people can expect to live into their eighties and beyond. Despite the extended lifespan, our knowledge on ageing is limited. The increasing proportion of elderly population has posed great social, financial and health care challenges. To age with grace relies on a biologically young and healthy body system, which is largely determined by endothelial and vascular functions - One is as old as her/his arteries. The team aims to apply current knowledge, frontier technologies and multidisciplinary applications to promote healthy cardiovascular ageing.
• Endothelial cells are the innermost layer of the arterial wall, sense the hemodynamic and humoral microenvironment in the blood, and deliver signals to smooth muscle for modulating the vascular tone responses. Endothelial senescence represents a key characteristic of early vascular aging and contributes to the development of various arterial abnormalities associated with age, such as increased stiffness, calcification, aneurysm and atherosclerosis. Thus, to understand the signaling pathways and mechanisms underlying the senescence of endothelial cells and the abnormalities of aged artery will help to uncover the process of and to develop novel agents for preventing and reverting arterial ageing.
• Adiponectin is an insulin-sensitizing hormone with anti-diabetic, anti-atherogenic, anti- inflammatory, cardioprotective and anti-cancer properties. Low level of circulating adiponectin (hypoadiponectinemia) is associated with various medical complications, such as obesity, coronary artery disease, hypertension, atherosclerosis, dementia, chronic inflammation and cancers. However, it is difficult to obtain large amount of full-length glycosylated human adiponectin with proper posttranslational modification. There is a long-standing interest in developing adiponectin supplementation for the unmet medical. Using chemical synthetic approaches, it has been demonstrated that the glycosylated adiponectin collagenous domain exhibits promising in vivo anti-tumor, insulin sensitizing and hepatoprotective activities, thus representing promising therapeutics to treat diseases associated with deficient adiponectin.
• Hypertension is a major global health concern, leading to severe complications in heart, brain, kidney and other organs. Currently, about 1.3 billion people around the world have hypertension, with a prevalence of >30% in adults. More than half of adults with hypertension are undiagnosed and unaware of the disease, thus not being treated. Despite various existing therapy, hypertension remains poorly controlled. Only 1 in 5 patients with hypertension respond to medical treatment. Approximately 25% of those require three different types of antihypertensive drugs to achieve the therapeutic goals. Most patients eventually develop into a “resistant” or “uncontrolled” stage of hypertension. The increased prevalence of hypertension is largely due to global population ageing and obesity pandemic. Obesity contributes to ~65-70% primary (essential) hypertension and represents the main lifestyle cause in the general human population. Obesity is also common among patients with treatment-resistant hypertension. Patients with obesity requires more antihypertensive medications to control their blood pressure compared with lean subjects with hypertension. The project aims to investigate the peripheral and central mechanisms underlying obesity-mediated hypertension. To this end, studies will be performed in mice challenged with dietary or genetic obesity and human subjects to dissect the precise mechanisms and uncover novel therapeutic approaches in obesity-induced hypertension.

• General Research Funds (17124718, 17117017, 17153016, 17121714, HKU780613, HKU779712, HKU781311, HKU780410, HKU777908, HKU778007); HMRF (13142651, 04151796)
• Central Allocation –Group Research Project (C7055-14G, HKU2/CRF/12R, HKU4/CRF/10, HKU2/07C, HKU3CRF/09) from Hong Kong Research Grant Council; Les Laboratoires Servier (RS100503)
• National “973” basic research project (2010CB945502, 2011CB504004 and 2015CB553603); NSFC-NHMRC Joint Research
• Area of Excellent Scheme (AoE/M-707/18 and AoE/P-10-01), University Grants Committee, HKSAR
• UGC One-off Special Equipment Grant Scheme (SEG HKU02)
• State Key Laboratory of Pharmaceutical Biotechnology, HKU

Research Collaborators

• Prof Alok Mitra, Dr Mazdak Radjainia, Prof Garth JS Cooper, School of Biological Sciences, The University of Auckland
• Prof Gary Sweeney, Department of Biology, York University, Totonto, Ontario
• Prof Inkyu Lee, Kyungpook National University Hospital, School of Medicine, Kyungpook National University
• Prof Jo De Mey, Department of Cardiovascular and Renal Research, University of Southern Denmark
• Prof Stefan Chłopicki, Jagiellonian Center for Experimental Therapeutics, POLAND
• Prof Weiping Han, Laboratory of Metabolic Medicine, Singapore Bioimaging Consortium, A*STAR

Regular Student Consultation Hours

Every Monday at 8:00am - 9:00am

Office

2/F, 21 Sassoon Road, Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine, Laboratory Block, Faculty of Medicine Building, Hong Kong SAR, China