HKU Bulletin June 2006 (Vol. 7 No. 3)

4 5 One Year to Focus on Research R ecipient of this year’s Croucher Senior Research Fellowship, Professor David Lee Phillips said he is ‘very happy’ with the award. “It is a great honour and recognition for the research we have done,” he said. “The award also provides an opportunity to strive for better research into problems one wants to deeply focus on during the year of the Fellowship and that is also very exciting and important to me.” Phillips, who joined the University in 1993, is Head of the Department of Chemistry and Director of the Ultrafast Laser Facility at the University. He currently spends fifty to sixty per cent of his time on teaching and administrative duties. “The fel lowship,” he agreed, “wi l l provide me with a substantial amount of time to devote to developing research into chemical reactions relevant to problems like chemical and photochemical damage of DNA. “During the next year, I plan to focus on the further development of our experimental and theoretical investigation of chemical reactions relevant to these areas.” In explaining the chemical reactions and specific areas of research he intends to pursue Phillips said: “Carcinogenic aromatic amine compounds have been observed in automobile exhaust, tobacco smoke, fermented fish and as trace products in various industrial processes. “When these aromatic amines are metabolised by animals and humans, they can damage guanine bases in DNA that then leads to an increase in the probability for tumour formation and cancer. Arylnitrenium ions are the key reactive intermediates in the metabolism of several typical carcinogenic aromatic amines that selectively react with guanine in DNA. “These are short-l ived and difficult to study in room temperature solutions. We recently reported the first transient vibrational spectrum obtained for a photochemically produced arylnitrenium ion in a largely aqueous system more relevant to biological conditions.” And although sunlight is essential for life, it is now common knowledge that it contains harmful ultraviolet (UV) light that can cause both skin damage and skin cancer. “UV l ight can exci te the nucleobases in DNA and induce photophysical and photochemical reactions that are responsible for some of the most serious DNA photo-induced damage,” explained Phillips. “While the major products of these chemical reactions have been identified and characterized, the underlying events and molecular level mechanisms leading to the photo-damage of DNA are still unclear. Thus, there is much current interest in understanding the photo-physics and photochemistry of nucleobases in either a single base form or within ol igonucleotides and DNA to establ ish a l ink between the photo-excited states and subsequently formed photo-damage.” The team will use their newly-developed ultrafast time- resolved spectroscopic techniques in conducting their research. “This work will provide important new experimental evidence that can lead to a better understanding of how UV light absorption leads to damage of nucleobases, oligonucleotides and DNA,” said Phillips. RESEARCH Croucher Senior Research Fellowships Two of our academics were honoured to receive the Croucher Senior Research Fellowship award this year, Professor David Lee Phillips, Reader of the Department of Chemistry and Professor Yuen Kwok Yung, Professor: Chair of Infectious Diseases of the Department of Microbiology. The scheme, inaugurated in 1996, offers full financial support for senior scientists to devote a year to full-time research, releasing them from heavy teaching and administrative duties. T he Croucher Senior Research Fellow intends to spend his time researching the bird flu virus and discovering new viruses that infect humans and animals. Professor Yuen Kwok Yung, a graduate of the University and Head of the Department of Microbiology, said he greatly appreciated the award “as I used to spend half of my time seeing patients and teaching which left very little time for research. “I will try to utilize this break to focus on my current research activities,” he added. That research thrust him into the international spotlight in 2003 when the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) outbreak swept through the region. Yuen, who has the rare distinction of being a microbiologist, surgeon and physician, played a key role in the discovery of the coronavirus causing SARS, which was crucial to containing the outbreak of this disease. He also led his team in the discovery of the novel Human Coronavirus HKU1, the bat SARS coronavirus and Laribacter hongkongensis . Yuen published the first clinical and laboratory diagnostic paper on Influenza A H5N1 (the virus that causes bird flu) in The Lancet in 1998. His expertise in emerging infectious diseases saw Yuen appointed as Co-Scientific Director of the HKU Pasteur Research Centre in 2000. Last year the University appointed him as the Henry Fok Professor of Infectious Diseases and he was also appointed the first director of China’s Ministry of Science and Technology State Key Laboratory of Emerging Infectious Diseases, established at the University. This is the first State Key Laboratory outside the Mainland. Yuen explained that his research strategy starts at the bedside by targeting patients with an obscure disease syndrome. After which he moves to the laboratory to identify the novel microbe in clinical specimens. The animal source of the new microbe is then identified in the field and with these research data he can help the government contain outbreaks by controlling the epidemic centre. Yuen serves on the editorial board of two medical journals, Clinical Infectious Disease and Chest . He has published more than 300 papers in peer reviewed journals including The Lancet, New England Journal of Medicine, Science, Journal of Virology and PNAS , with over 5,000 citations. Time for Research