HKU Public Lecture on Gene and Cancer & Stem Cells

The University of Hong Kong Li KaShing Faculty of Medicine, Centre for Genomic Sciences, Department of Medicine, and Department of Pharmacology and Pharmacy is organizing a public lecture series - "Genomic Medicine: What is it about". The purpose of this series of public lectures is to enhance people’s awareness, understanding, and interest on genomic medicine in Hong Kong. Minda and I attended the last lecture named “Gene and Cancer & Stem Cells”.

The first speaker was Dr. Jenny Ho (Research Officer, Department of Medicine, HKU) and her topic entitled “Can induced pluripotent stem cells do everything?”

Dr. Ho introduced the collection of cord blood stem cells first and mentioned some successful cases. After that she introduced “Mesenchymal Stem Cells (間充質幹細胞)” and “Autologous Stem Cell Transplantation (自體幹細胞移植)”.

After that Dr. Ho briefed Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells (iPS) (誘導多能性幹細胞) which was discovered by Yamanaka Shin'ya (日本京都大學 山中伸彌) research team since 2006. Yamanaka awarded Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2012.

The treatment research on cancer was summarized in the following diagram.

The following video showed the recently HKU research on stem cells reformation of heart tissues. You could see the cell motion.

Finally, Dr. Ho summarized different characteristics on different stem cells on the following table.

The second speaker was Dr. Vivian Lui (Assistant Professor, Department of Pharmacology and Pharmacy, HKU) and her presentation named “Tailor-made Cancer treatment”.

In the beginning, Dr. Lui explained what is cancer and its mechanism. Then she pointed out some reasons could cause cancer such as smoking, drinking, UV, chemical and virus. The two factors caused gene mutations were shown in the following diagram.

Then Dr. Lui introduced the Targeted Therapy (標靶藥). In USA, FDA approved abut 63-65 Targeted Therapy but there are only 23 Targeted Therapy approved in Hong Kong. Different mutation of gene had different communication mechanism that needed different Targeted Therapy. Therefore, batch DNA testing was needed to identify which part of gene was mutated and used to match different Targeted Therapy if exist.

At the end, Dr. Lui concluded that personalized treatment for cancer through DNA testing identification was most effectiveness.

Reference:
HKU Public Lecture Series - http://www.hkuehealth.org/eng/genomic/index.html