26 May 2019
Twenty-one teams of students from The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) received awards at the Hong Kong University Student Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition 2019, held on 25 and 26 May 2019.
CU Press Release:
https://www.cpr.cuhk.edu.hk
/en/press_detail.php?id=3060
Among these twenty-one awarded teams, our BME students are included in four of the teams and have won the following awards:
Twenty-one teams of students from The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) received awards at the Hong Kong University Student Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition 2019, held on 25 and 26 May 2019.
Here is the brief introduction of the projects of two of our awarded teams:
Innovation Second-class Award:
Unfoldable Supramolecular Single Chain Nanogel-based integrin ligand tether regulates mechanosensing of stem cells
This winning project is designed by Xiaoyu CHEN, a PhD student from Department of Biomedical Engineering. This project demonstrated a novel way to modulate the ligand tether mobility by controlling the intramolecular folding of polymeric linkers as a mimicking of the changes in the native cellular microenvironment. Specifically, we first developed a scale-up method to prepare supramolecular host-guest single chain nanogels (SCNGs) with easy synthetic routes and controllable structures. Then we demonstrated the application of SCNGs as the supramolecular linker to tune the nanoscale ligand tether length and achieved the regulation of behavior and fate of stem cells. Our findings proved that the strategy of manipulating the tether mobility of bioactive ligands by using supramolecular SCNGs as linkers provides a highly tunable, biomimetic, and bio-orthogonal approach to study the dynamic events of cell adhesion.
Entrepreneurship First-class Award: Smart Therapeutic Device for prevention and treatment of Knee Osteoarthritis
The winning project is designed by a team named MTCure of three PhD students from Department of Orthopaedics and Traumatology Prof. Ling QIN’s group (Li ZOU, Xuan HE) and Department of Biomedical Engineering Prof. Liming BIAN’s group (Xiayi XU). The team has designed a medical device for prevention and treatment of knee osteoarthritis and related degenerative diseases. Traditional clinic therapies require doctor’s operation in the hospital, which consume time, energy and money. To face the strained medical resources and to achieve “healthy aging”, this team has developed an easy-to-use medical device, which is a promising and novel solution for reducing knee symptoms. By a combination of heat therapy, photo-biomodulation and mechanical induction, this device can help relieve the pain, reduce inflammation and promote joint tissue regeneration. In the next step, we plan to introduce AI technology to facilitate individual treatment adjustment, therefore aiming to realize personalized medical service.
