Date: 17 February 2023 (Friday)

Time: 5:00 p.m. - 6:00 p.m.

Venue: Cheung Kung Hai Lecture Theatre 1, G/F, William M.W. Mong Block, 21 Sassoon Road

5:00 p.m.

Presenter: Miss Weisi HE, PhD candidate
Primary Supervisor: Prof. Julian TANNER
Presentation Title: Blood diagnostic aptasensor of early-stage pancreatic cancer
Abstract: Pancreatic cancer (PC) has a high mortality rate with poor prognosis. The poor prognosis is partially due to late detection of PC. At present, tissue biopsy, imaging, and blood testing are three major diagnostic methods for PC. Among these, blood testing is cheaper, carries convenience for patient, but the sensitivity of existing blood testing tools is insufficient to screen early-stage PC patient. Developing a high-sensitivity blood testing tool to detect early-stage PC is an important challenge. Here, we characterized published aptamers that can be further applied in aptasensor to detect early-stage PC in blood. In the first stage of the research, asprosin, one of the early-stage pancreatic cancer biomarkers, was expressed. Although the majority amount of the expressed protein is in the pellet, the amount of purified asprosin from supernatant is sufficient to do the aptamer selection in the next stage. In the second stage, I am going to screen out the unmodified and modified DNA aptamers against asprosin and in the third stage I will combine our selected aptamer with published aptamers to develop a multi-aptamer for detecting early-stage PC in serum.

5:30 p.m.

Presenter: Miss Hin Yuk LAI, PhD candidate
Primary Supervisor: Dr. Clive CHUNG
Presentation Title: A novel cysteine reactive probe for ligandable cysteine mining in live cells
Abstract: Cysteine-reactive probes are key to identifying covalently ligandable cysteine. Recognising the functional and reactive cysteines on protein aided the understanding of complex biological processes and drug development. Fair cysteine reactivity and selectivity, high cellular toxicity and low biostability of conventional IAA hampered identification of functional cysteines in chemoproteomics. Here, we presented a novel class of cysteine-reactive probe, N-acyloylindole-alkynes (NAIAs), and applied them for proteome-wide cysteine profiling in human cancer cells. This study shows advancement in cysteine reactivity and selectivity in NAIAs through electrophilic activation of acrylamide. Our work also identified a distinct set of ligandable cysteines on transcription factors which are potential targets for therapeutic agents. These results illustrated the superior chemical and biological features of NAIs for advancing chemoproteomic platforms.

ALL ARE WELCOME

Should you have any enquiries, please feel free to contact Miss Cynthia Cheung at 3917 9748.