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10 Feature People Power HKUSZH may have the highest profile of the Faculty’s contributions to the Mainland’s healthcare reform, but we are also making valuable contributions through our “software”: our people and expertise, connections across continents, and determination to improve health for everyone. Individual academics have helped to boost medical research in the Mainland by establishing centres where they can share their expertise. Professor Guan Yi, for instance, who is one of the top virologists in the world, spearheaded the Joint Influenza Research Centre at Shantou University (STU-HKU) in 2001, which evolved in 2016 to become the Joint Institute of Virology (STU-HKU). The institute is a major national and international base, with more than 70 researchers from Asia, North America and Europe. In 2017 it was awarded the Grand Prize of the State Scientific and Technological Progress Award in health and education for its work on preventing and treating Avian H7N9 infections in humans. A team led by Professor Guan was also awarded RMB 25 million under the Peacock Programme of the Shenzhen Municipal Government in 2012 to conduct joint research on emerging infections through the State Key Laboratory on Emerging Infectious Diseases (Shenzhen Base), which was jointly founded by HKU and the Third People’s Hospital of Shenzhen. Another example is Professor Xu Aimin, Chair of Metabolic Medicine, whose research has focused on discovering and characterising the factors that lead to obesity-related cardio-metabolic complications and developing diagnostic, screening and other tools into applications for use with patients. Professor Xu has been involved in collaborations and clinical trials with scholars in various countries, including Mainland China, and he is the Director of the State Key Laboratory (SKL) of Pharmaceutical Biotechnology. The work of Professor Xu and his colleagues helped to propel the formation of a joint Innovations Platform between HKU and Guangdong Pharmaceutical University (GDPU) in 2018. This platform HK$77.8 Million For Diabetes Research 糖尿病研究獲 7,780 萬港元撥款 Professor Xu Aimin is Project Coordinator of the new Institute of Metabolic Medicine, which aims to combat diabetes, a disease that affects more than 425 million people worldwide and has serious complications including shortened lifespan. The project was recently awarded HK$77.8 million under the Areas of Excellence (AOE) scheme of Hong Kong Research Grants Council and will draw on rich clinical resources in Hong Kong and mainland China to discover new biomarkers, and to develop diagnostic algorithm for risk prediction and personalized management of the disease. Another main goal of the project is to gain a deeper understanding of the disease, such as why visceral fat is such a major risk factor for diabetes in Chinese and how exercise may (and may not) help to prevent the disease. Professor Xu’s team includes scholars from multiple disciplines at four Hong Kong universities. 徐愛民教授是新成立的代謝醫學研究所的項目統籌人， 該研究所旨在防治糖尿病。糖尿病在全球影響逾4億 2,500萬人，為患者帶來嚴重併發症，甚至縮短壽命。這個 項目最近獲香港研究資助局的卓越學科領域計劃撥款 7,780萬港元，以善用香港及內地的豐富臨床資源，尋找 新型生物標記物，開發供診斷的風險預測模型及個體化疾 病管理。項目的另一個目標是要進一步了解糖尿病，例如， 為何內臟脂肪是中國人患糖尿病的主要高危因素；運動如 何可（或不可）有助預防疾病。徐教授的團隊包括四家香 港大學多個學科的學者。 2 1