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The 7th Hong Kong University Student Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition was held at Hong Kong Science Park recently. Students from The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) showed active and exemplary participation, winning a total of 15 awards in the competition including two first-class awards, two second-class awards, five third-class awards and three merit awards in the Innovation category, and one third-class award and two merit awards in the Entrepreneurship category.

The competition was organised by the Hong Kong New General Cultural Association and winners will represent Hong Kong in the two nationwide competitions. Winning projects under the Innovation category will take part in the “Challenge Cup” National College Students’ Extracurricular Academic Science and Technology Contest whilst the winning Entrepreneurship projects will be entered in the China International College Students’ “Internet+” Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition and/or the “Challenge Cup” (Chuang Qing Chun) China College Students Entrepreneurship Competition.

The two CUHK team projects awarded First-class are “Development of a Novel Neutrophil-based Anticancer Immunotherapy: S3KO-TAN” and “Miniaturised Robotic Steerable Surgical Drill for Confined-Space Bone Work”, both in the category of Innovation.

Innovation First-class Award: Development of a Novel Neutrophil-based Anticancer Immunotherapy: S3KO-TAN

Cancer is one of the leading causes of death because cancer cells are so highly versatile that they easily develop drug resistance under conventional therapy. Host immunity plays a vital role against cancer, but less than 30% of lung cancer patients show a distinctive response to the latest immunotherapy. Therefore, PhD student Jeff Yat-Fai CHUNG and MPhil student Max Kam-Kwan CHAN from the Department of Anatomical and Cellular Pathology, supervised by Professor Patrick Ming-Kuen TANG, Assistant Professor of the Department, have successfully developed a novel anticancer immunotherapy in which they genetically engineer the most abundant immune cell type in our blood – Neutrophil. 

In this invention, a novel anticancer immunotherapeutic S3KO-TAN can be mass produced by editing human neutrophils with the latest genome engineering technology CRISPR/Cas9. Neutrophils are suitable for allogenic use without antigen pairing and can be easily obtained from blood by-products, markedly overcoming the unsolved barriers of the T-cell immunotherapy. The study is supported by Hong Kong Research Grants Council, State Key Laboratory of Translational Oncology, and CU Medicine Faculty Innovation Award. The research team wishes to translate S3KO-TAN into an effective and safe anticancer immunotherapy in the future.

Innovation First-class Award: Miniaturised Robotic Steerable Surgical Drill for Confined-Space Bone Work

The human body structure is highly complex and irregular. In conventional orthopedic surgery, doctors have to remove a considerable amount of healthy tissue in order to gain access to the target surgical sites with straight and rigid surgical tools. This will lead to postoperative pain and complications, so prolonging hospital stays and recovery time. WANG Yan, LIN Hongbin, and WANG Xuchen, PhD students from the Department of Mechanical and Automation Engineering (MAE), supervised by Professor AU Kwok Wai Samuel of the MAE Department, developed a miniaturised steerable surgical drill for bone work in a confined space. The miniaturised dimension (with a diameter of 4.5 mm) and considerably enhanced distal steerability (±65 degrees) enable doctors to access target surgical sites through small incisions while steering around anatomical corners minimises intraoperative harms on the patient during the process. This articulated drill tip is integrated into a lightweight (200 g) pen-style handheld device, which is easy to use and adaptable to existing surgical procedures. The handheld device can also be optionally mounted on a robotic arm for higher-precision autonomous control. Potential applications of the device include surgery on ENT, the cranial base, and the spine. The project has also been awarded First Runner-up in the Postgraduate group in the 2021 Professor Charles K. Kao Student Creativity Awards.

List of CUHK awarded projects is provided below: