Research

The functioning biological systems, at levels from organs, bones, cells and cell organelles, largely depends on their mechanical structure and behavior. Our faculty members have been engaged in taking interdisciplinary approaches that involve investigations on this front with the aim of achieving breakthrough in areas such as drug delivery, disease detection and treatment. On the other hand, transport of biofluids plays an important role in not just physiological systems, but also artificial systems for diagnosing, monitoring and treating disease conditions, such as cancer. Our members have been actively working on characterization and manipulation of fluids through the use of micro-devices to mimic physiological conditions, for instance, in eyes. Novel droplet-based microfluidic platforms are also used for screening and selection of compounds with therapeutic functions.

Biomedical imaging instrumentation has been playing a pivotal role in accelerating scientific discovery and enabling effective medical diagnosis and treatment of disease. Our faculty members have been in the forefront of addressing the key challenges in biomedical imaging. They include (I) advanced in vivo MRI methodologies to enable the study of anatomy and functions of complex physiological systems in animal models of human diseases; (II) ultrafast optical microscopy technologies for large-scale cancer screening and 3D biological imaging, deep-learning-based single-cell analysis; (III) novel ultrasound imaging techniques to investigate the kinematics, mechanical properties, and function of soft tissues, with a current major focus on cardiovascular disease.

Our faculty members have established leading expertise in the development of natural biomaterials and stem cell based technologies for tissue engineering and regenerative medicine. They include multiphoton microprinting & micropatterning technology, microencapsulation, and micropipette-based mechanical loading. These integrative technologies, developed at HKU, have been found instrumental in a wide range of applications, including functional replacements for tissues (e.g. cartilage, bone, intervertebral disc, tendon and ligament), and 3D culture systems (e.g. stem cells and genetically engineered cells) for biotechnology and biopharmaceutical applications.

Adapting from computer science, mathematics, statistics, physics, chemistry, our faculty members have been developing new advanced computational methodologies and apply them in a wide variety of biomedical research and clinical applications. Specifically, these applications include analysis of protein structure and function, synthetic biology, CRISPR-based genome engineering, high-throughput sequencing, understanding biophysical and biomechanical phenotypes of tissues and cells, deep learning of multi-faceted biological/clinical data for scientific discovery and disease diagnosis/prognosis.