Convocation Newsletter, Summer 2018

16 Flu Breakthrough A team led by Professor Yuen Kwok-yung 袁國勇 (MBBS 1981; MD 1998) (above), Dr Zhao Hanjun 趙旵軍 (PhD 2013) and Dr Kelvin To 杜啟泓 （ MBBS 2003; PDipID 2006; MD 2015) of the Department of Microbiology published research on a cutting-edge technique to help predict whether an emerging virus will have outbreak potential in humans, an important advance in the battle against possible future flu pandemics. Professor Yuen holds the Henry Fok Professorship in Infectious Diseases. The team included Dr Jane Zhou 周婕 (PhD 2007), a research assistant professor at the Department of Microbiology, and Professor Hans Clevers’ Hubrecht Institute Laboratory in the Netherlands. The findings were published in June 2018 in Nature Communications , and a provisional US patent application has been filed. The group created the “mature airway organoid culture system” – or so-called “organs in a dish” – which mimic the respiratory tract from the nose to the bronchus using adult stem cells from lung tissue. Currently, there is no reliable model to predict which new animal viruses could potentially spread to humans. Writing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , the team warned that new flu viruses could impact large populations if people did not have immunity. Treating MERS Researchers at the Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine discovered a potential breakthrough in treating the deadly Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS). Combining two readily available drugs – cyclosporine, an immunosuppressant, and interferon, which is used for influenza – could inhibit virus replication and tissue damage. Their findings were published in May 2018 in Antiviral Research . The researchers used a “lung in a test tube” model they created to study MERS. The explant culture system of the human respiratory tract was developed in 2005 by Professor John Nicholls of the Department of Pathology, in conjunction with Dr Michael Chan 陳志偉 (BSc 1996; MPhil 1999), Dr Renee Chan 陳韻怡 (BSc 2003; MPhil 2005; PhD 2009), Professor Leo Poon 潘烈文 and Professor Malik Peiris 裴偉士 at the School of Public Health. Though Hong Kong has not been affected by MERS, the virus has caused a major problem in the Middle East, where infection is associated with a mortality rate of up to 39%. As it is a virus related to SARS, MERS is regarded by the WHO as one of the more concerning threats to global public health. Research Matters SUMMER 2018