UM develops novel antibacterial drug against drug-resistant bacteria

A research team led by Lee Tsz On, associate professor in the Faculty of Health Sciences (FHS) at the University of Macau (UM), has made a breakthrough in the study of bacteria. They have identified a novel antibacterial compound that can effectively kill bacterial pathogens that are resistant to antibiotic treatments, providing a new strategy for treating drug-resistant bacterial infections. The research results have been published in the internationally renowned journal International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents.

Bacterial infections were once one of the greatest threats to human health. The deadliest pandemic in human history, known as the Black Death, devastated medieval Europe, resulting in approximately 200 million deaths worldwide. It was later confirmed that the culprit behind the Black Death was the bacterium Yersinia pestis. In the past, due to the lack of effective treatment methods, even a minor bacterial infection in a wound could be life-threatening. With the advent of antibiotics, this dark period saw a ray of hope. Antibiotics enabled us to treat wound infections and respiratory tract infections effectively, as well as perform various surgeries safely. However, with the widespread use of antibiotics, bacteria have gradually evolved the ability to evade antibiotic killing, leading to antibiotic resistance. As more and more bacteria are proving resistant to multiple or even all clinically available antibiotics, it seems that another dark period similar to the pre-antibiotic era is upon us. Therefore, the development of new antibacterial drugs has become imminent to address the growing problem of antibiotic resistance.

To quickly identify new drugs that can effectively combat drug-resistant bacteria, the research team screened a commercial chemical compound library. Most of the compounds in the library are already approved for treating non-bacterial infections. Reutilising these approved drugs to treat drug-resistant bacterial infections would not only significantly reduce the time required for new drug development, but also avoid potential unknown side effects and fully explore the clinical value of these drugs. After a series of screenings, the research team discovered a compound called BMS. This compound can not only kill drug-resistant bacteria directly, but also enhance the therapeutic effects of the clinical antibiotic colistin. The results showed that the compound exhibits good therapeutic effects against many drug-resistant clinical bacteria and even multidrug-resistant bacteria. In addition, the research team also analysed the BMS compound’s target on bacteria and its mechanism of action. The study found that the compound primarily targets the phospholipids on the bacterial cell membrane and exerts its antibacterial effect by damaging the bacterial cell membrane and causing metabolic disturbances in the bacteria. The research provides new insights into the treatment of drug-resistant bacterial infections and the development of novel antibacterial drugs to combat the antibiotic resistance crisis.

Prof Lee and Zheng Jun, former associate professor in the FHS, are the corresponding authors of the study. PhD student Zhang Nian is the first author. Associate Professor Tam Kin Yip, and PhD students Shan Wenying, Gao Liangliang, and Kou Si Hoi in the FHS, technicians Lu Chang and Yang Huilin from Peking University Shenzhen Hospital, and Prof Peng Bo from Sun Yat-sen University also made important contributions to the study. The research was supported by the Science and Technology Development Fund of the Macao SAR (File no: 0016/2020/A1), and UM (File no: MYRG2020-00226-FHS and MYRG2022-00240-FHS). The full version of the paper can be viewed at https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37328075/.

To read the news on UM’s official website, please visit the following link:
https://www.um.edu.mo/news-and-press-releases/campus-news/detail/56239/

UM’s summer camp enables secondary school students to engage in health sciences research

The Faculty of Health Sciences (FHS) of the University of Macau (UM) recently organised two sessions of the Health Sciences Summer Camp, which attracted nearly 70 students from 34 local secondary schools. With the theme of ‘Biological Detectives’, the summer camp provided students with an opportunity to explore the world of biomedical sciences as ‘detectives’ and learn about biomedical research techniques under the guidance of professors and students in the FHS.

The summer camp, which included lectures, hands-on experiments, visits, and exchange sessions, aimed to cultivate students’ interest in health sciences and offer them a glimpse of university life. At the opening ceremony, Xu Ren-He, associate dean of the FHS, welcomed the participants and encouraged them to acquire new knowledge and take an interest in biomedical sciences. Poon Chuen Wai, associate professor in the FHS, told the students about the fundamental concepts, scope of application, and new technologies of biomedical sciences. The participants also visited the Animal Research Core to learn about how it breeds experimental animals that meet the recognised standards and uses transgenic and gene knockout technologies to build animal models, gaining an understanding of UM’s research progress and results in precision oncology.

Many participants said that the summer camp provided them with the opportunity to learn about cutting-edge technologies and experience the strong research atmosphere of UM. Xu Ziheng, a student at Pui Ching Middle School, said that the summer camp enabled him to acquire biological knowledge, and strengthened his interest in health sciences research through hands-on experiments. Leong Choi Io, a student at Colégio de Santa Rosa de Lima – Secção Chinesa, mentioned that engaging in hands-on experiments allowed her to apply basic knowledge to practical operations and made her realise that the accuracy of experiments depends on every single detail, adding that the summer camp enabled her to experience the life of university students and researchers. Chen Hanyang, a student at the School of the Nations, said that he and his teammates worked together to find out the ‘murderer’ using genetic identification technology in a course, which made him realise that scientific research and technology are closely linked to everyday life. Mok Weng Io, a student at Macau Anglican College, noted that the summer camp offered a wealth of activities. In addition to conducting hands-on experiments, she visited core facilities that are equipped with a lot of advanced biomedical equipment, which made her realise that every important invention is the result of the joint efforts of many parties.

To read the news on UM’s official website, please visit the following link:
https://www.um.edu.mo/news-and-press-releases/press-release/detail/56240/

UM SKL-IOTSC’s national key R&D project passes assessment

A key project titled ‘Data Fusion and Dynamic Cognition Technology and Platform for Urban Public Services’ (Project no: 2019YFB2102100), led by Xu Cheng-Zhong, dean of the Faculty of Science and Technology (FST) at the University of Macau (UM) and chief scientist of the State Key Laboratory of Internet of Things for Smart City (SKL-IOTSC) of UM, passed the assessment conducted by the Industry Development and Promotion Center of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and was highly praised by the expert panel. The project is part of the National Key Research and Development Programme in the fields of Internet of Things (IoT) and smart cities.

Song Yonghua, director of the advisory committee of the project, rector of UM, and director of SKL-IOTSC, remarked that the successful completion of the project marked a new milestone for the university in the research of smart city.

By conducting research on key technologies including real-time data collection and collaborative perception of diverse data sources in cities, knowledge association and dynamic growth of urban perception data, extraction of various urban scene patterns and enhancement of situation awareness, and efficient and low-consumption computing platforms, the project introduced the concept of urban knowledge association and environmental perception. In addition, it created the LibCity, an urban dynamic cognition algorithm library, and established a cloud-edge integrated urban brain open platform for small and medium-sized cities. The results of the project were applied in four types of scenarios, namely urban transportation, large-scale events, smart tourism, and public facilities. The relevant demonstrations and trials took place in several small and medium-sized cities and districts, such as Haikou, Jiashan, Mengzi, Jiujiang, Jiaxing, and Qiantang district in Hangzhou.

The project was jointly completed by Alibaba Cloud Co Ltd, Zhuhai UM Science & Technology Research Institute, Zhejiang Lab, South China University of Technology, Beihang University, Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hangzhou Dianzi University, China Academy of Urban Planning and Design, Beijing Amap Technology, and Zhongjing Hengji, among others. It is also the first national key R&D project undertaken by a scholar from the west coast of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area as the project leader and chief scientist.

To read the news on UM’s official website, please visit the following link:
https://www.um.edu.mo/news-and-press-releases/press-release/detail/56229/

UM organises FED Summer Camp to help mainland students learn about education in Macao

The Faculty of Education (FED) of the University of Macau (UM) organised the FED Summer Camp 2023, which attracted 30 outstanding students from top universities in the mainland. The summer camp offered a variety of activities, including lectures and hands-on experience, with the aim of broadening participants’ horizons in education, teaching, and research and enabling them to discover the characteristics of Macao’s education system and the charm of Macao’s world and cultural heritage. The participants came from Beijing Normal University, Southwest University, East China Normal University, and other mainland universities. At the opening ceremony, Kong Zhaowei and Zhou Mingming, associate deans of the FED, shared with them the methods of high-intensity interval training (HIIT) and the health benefits of a low-carbohydrate diet, as well as information on admissions and scholarships for the master’s and doctoral programmes in education at UM. In addition to attending a number of talks at the university, the participants visited Seac Pai Wan Vocational and Technical Education Activities Center and Our Lady of Fatima Girls’ School to learn about the characteristics of Macao’s education system. Through the summer camp, the FED hopes to strengthen its connection with mainland universities and provide an opportunity for students and educators in Macao and the mainland to broaden their horizons.

To read the news on UM’s official website, please visit the following link:
https://www.um.edu.mo/news-and-press-releases/campus-news/detail/56227/

UM’s machine translation research presented at top conference

Wong Fai, professor in the Natural Language Processing & Portuguese-Chinese Machine Translation Laboratory (NLP²CT) at the University of Macau (UM) and his team presented several papers at the 61st Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL 2023) and attracted considerable attention. UM’s advancements in related fields will promote technological cooperation between Macao and Portuguese-speaking countries and help Macao play its role as a platform between China and Portuguese-speaking countries.

The ACL 2023 conference received 4,559 submissions from around the world, of which 945 were accepted, accounting for 20.7 per cent of the total submissions. Five papers contributed by UM were accepted as main conference papers and two were accepted as findings papers. These papers covered a diverse array of subjects, including machine translation (MT), grammar error correction, and natural language generation.

During the conference, PhD students Liu Shudong and Zhan Runzhe presented two papers on machine translation training and evaluation. The first paper introduces a training and extraction method that can effectively transfer knowledge from a high-resource MT model to a child model, thus enabling the translation of low-resource language pairs. Compared to the previous transfer learning approaches that only focus on initialising model parameters, the new approach facilitates knowledge transfer in the training and inference stages. The second paper focuses on the automatic evaluation of MT and proposes a self-supervised approach to dynamically adapt the model to deal with out-of-distribution issues in cross-domain evaluation, thereby enhancing prediction performance. Both methodologies have been submitted for a patent application.

Natural language processing (NLP) research plays a crucial role in modern artificial intelligence (AI), driving the development of AI products such as the revolutionary ChatGPT. Over the past five years, UM has presented over 20 papers at the ACL conference, demonstrating the university’s leading expertise in NLP. Under the leadership of Prof Wong, the research team has been dedicated to NLP research for two decades and published a number of research results, demonstrating its world-leading research capacity. The team’s participation in the conference was supported by the Science and Technology Development Fund of the Macao SAR and UM.

The ACL conference is widely regarded as the top academic conference in the field of NLP. According to Google Scholar’s metrics, its conference proceedings are ranked first in the H5 Index of NLP publications. It is also listed as a Class A conference in the List of Academic Conferences and Periodicals Recommended by the China Computer Federation. Over the years, the conference has received sponsorship from major technology giants such as Google, Meta, Microsoft, and Apple, providing a platform for researchers from both academia and industry around the world to conduct academic exchange, and advancing the field with concerted efforts.

To read the news on UM’s official website, please visit the following link:
https://www.um.edu.mo/news-and-press-releases/press-release/detail/56223/

UM’s FST Summer Camp broadens secondary school students’ research horizons

The Faculty of Science and Technology (FST) of the University of Macau (UM) recently held the FST Summer Camp. It featured nine technology-related themes and attracted 240 students from 30 secondary schools in Macao. The summer camp was rich in content and enabled local secondary school students to learn about advanced research fields and broaden their horizons through a combination of lectures and hands-on experiences.

The summer camp covered various topics such as new environmental materials, mechatronics engineering, robotics, artificial intelligence, marine science and technology, smart city, internet of things, climate change, civil engineering, numerical computation, integrated circuit design, and autonomous driving. The students participated in activities on different themes according to their interests. Led by professors and postgraduate students from the faculty, the students visited several laboratories at UM as well as private enterprises outside the campus. They also gained a better understanding of research at the university by attending lectures and having access to state-of-the-art research equipment. In addition, the students also visited the UM campus, residential colleges, exhibition halls, and the library to learn more about the university’s history, academic achievements, and teaching and research development, and experienced its international education setup and academic atmosphere.

In particular, 40 students who joined the integrated circuit design summer camp visited the State Key Laboratory of Analog and Mixed-Signal VLSI of UM. They took part in the chip design process, attended lectures, and engaged in experiment sessions to measure electronic circuits, so as to familiarise themselves with integrated circuit design and the relevant research. The students also interacted with UM professors and researchers to acquire professional knowledge.

The FST has been dedicated to promoting innovation and education in science and technology in Macao over the years. The summer camp provided local secondary school students with learning opportunities and a platform for exchange and communication. It aimed to foster their interest and potential in science and technology, stimulate their innovative thinking, and enhance their organisational and teamwork skills, thus promoting the cultivation of technological professionals and the development of research in Macao.

To read the news on UM’s official website, please visit the following link:
https://www.um.edu.mo/news-and-press-releases/press-release/detail/56221/

UM organises health sciences summer camp for outstanding mainland students

The University of Macau (UM) Faculty of Health Sciences (FHS) organised the Health Sciences Summer Camp for Outstanding Students of Mainland Universities 2023. The summer camp aimed to enhance students’ knowledge and interest in health sciences, and enable them to experience Macao’s culture and UM’s research environment, thus broadening their horizons of research.

The summer camp featured a string of activities, including lectures by UM professors in fields such as precision oncology, stem cells and development, neuroscience, biomedical imaging, nanomaterials, and so on. A total of 79 outstanding undergraduate students and professors from Zhejiang University, Jilin University, Sichuan University, and Northwestern Polytechnical University joined the summer camp. At the opening ceremony, Chuxia Deng, dean of the FHS, encouraged the students to stay passionate and curious about science and keep exploring in order to address the challenges facing the society. Xu Renhe, associate dean of the FHS, expressed hope that the summer camp could help promote research collaboration and academic exchange between universities in Macao and the mainland.

The participating teachers and students of the summer camp spoke highly of UM. According to Prof Chen Ye at Zhejiang University and Prof Shan Yaming at Jilin University, the summer camp created an excellent platform for academic interaction and exchange between students of Macao and the mainland, and strengthened cooperation and connection between mainland universities and UM. Zhang Shaowen, a student at Zhejiang University, said that UM has advanced research facilities and academic standing, adding that he was inspired by engaging with UM professors. Liu Xiaoxi, a student at Jilin University, noted that the summer camp not only deepened participants’ understanding of Macao’s economy, culture, and education but also allowed them to learn about the international education setup of UM, which strengthened his determination to pursue postgraduate studies at the university. You Chang, a student at Sichuan University, remarked that the summer camp enabled participants to experience Macao’s unique blend of Chinese and Western cultures, adding that the visit to the state key laboratories, frontiers science centre, and core facilities was an eye-opening experience for the students.

In addition to attending lectures, the students had the opportunity to exchange ideas with professors and their research teams. They also visited the state key laboratories of UM, frontiers science centre, core facilities of the FHS, library, residential college, and sports complex, as well as the world heritage sites in Macao. Through the visits, they learnt more about the history, academic achievements, learning environment, and research results of the university, and explored the profound history and culture of Macao.

To read the news on UM’s official website, please visit the following link:
https://www.um.edu.mo/news-and-press-releases/press-release/detail/56193/

UM develops nanomedicine to enhance breast cancer immunotherapy

A research team led by Dai Yunlu, associate professor in the Faculty of Health Sciences (FHS) at the University of Macau (UM), has designed a novel nanomedicine, which can convert traditional radiotherapy-mediated apoptosis into pyroptosis, stimulate systemic anti-tumour immune response, and significantly inhibit breast cancer growth, recurrence, and metastasis. The research results have been published in the renowned journal Advanced Functional Materials.

Radiotherapy, although clinically effective for localised tumours, still cannot radio-functionalise them as a potent immunogenetic centre. This is because radiotherapy inhibits tumour cell growth by inducing apoptosis, such apoptotic nature limits its activating performance on systemic immunosurveillance. Apoptotic cancer cell maintains an intact membrane that conceals abundant potentially immunogenic damage-associated molecular patterns (DAMPs) inside, the releasing of whom, otherwise, could evoke surrounding immune cells remarkably.

By W6+-coordinating natural polyphenols and chemically synthesised polyphenol derivatives, the research team developed a metal-polyphenolic nanocoordinator (PWE), which can epigenetically convert radiotherapy-mediated cell apoptosis to pyroptosis, thereby highly efficiently stimulating a systemic anti-tumour immune response. Specifically, PWE could be constructed via metal-phenolic coordination between poly-phenolic DNA methyltransferase (epigallocatechin-3-gallate, EGCG), high-Z radiosensitiser (W6+), and polyphenol-modified block copolymer. EGCG downregulated DNA hypermethylation of tumour cells and recovered their normal expression of the functional GSDME protein, a key protein of pyroptosis, while noble tungsten ions (W6+) sensitised by X-ray radiation boosted the production of cellular reactive oxygen species (ROS) that initiated the activation of caspase-3 through a potential pathway of Bax-Cytochrome c-caspase-9-caspase-3. The activated caspase-3 could be utilised to cleave GSDME upregulated by an EGCG demethylation, generating GSDME-N for cellular membrane perforation. The formed gasdermin pores enabled intracellular contents of GSDME, HMGB1, and lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) to pass through and release out of the cell, stimulating the immune system and reinvigorating anti-tumour immune responses. Furthermore, in treating 4T1 orthotopic breast tumour-bearing mice with the PWE nanomudulators, the research team identified efficient anti-tumour immune activity, long-lasting immunological memory, and metastatic inhibition. The nanocoordinator developed by metal-polyphenol coordination reshapes and ameliorates tumour immunity in traditional radiotherapy significantly through epigenetic pyroptosis, which may provide new insights into clinical radiotherapy.

The corresponding author of the study is Prof Dai. FHS PhD graduate Wang Guohao and Research Assistant Professor Li Bei are the co-first authors. Postdoctoral fellows Xie Lisi and Li Jie, PhD graduates Sang Wei and Zhang Zhan, PhD students Tian Hao, Yan Jie, and Li Wenxi also made important contributions to the study. The research project was supported by the Science and Technology Development Fund of the Macao SAR (File no: 0109/2018/A3, 0011/2019/AKP, 0113/2019/A2, 0103/2021/A, and 0002/2021/AKP), UM (File no: MYRG2022-00011-FHS), and the Shenzhen-Hong Kong-Macao Science and Technology Innovation Project (Category C) (File no: SGDX20201103093600004). The full version of the research article can be viewed at https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/adfm.202213425.

To read the news on UM’s official website, please visit the following link:
https://www.um.edu.mo/news-and-press-releases/campus-news/detail/56189/

UM professor’s book published by Cambridge University Press

Joshua Ehrlich, assistant professor in the Department of History of the University of Macau (UM) Faculty of Arts and Humanities, recently had his book, The East India Company and the Politics of Knowledge, published by Cambridge University Press. The book is the product of a decade of research in over 30 archives spanning three continents. It shows how the British East India Company used knowledge to consolidate its commercial and political power, thus constituting the major new study of the company.

According to Ehrlich, the British East India Company is remembered as the world’s most powerful but notorious corporation. However, generations of its advocates have revealed that a commitment to knowledge was integral to the company’s ideology. The book shows how the company cited this commitment in defence of its increasingly fraught union of commercial and political power. Developing a new approach, the history of ideas of knowledge, the author recovers a world of debate among the company’s officials and interlocutors on the political uses of knowledge. Not only were these historical actors highly articulate on the subject but their ideas continue to resonate in the present. Knowledge was a fixture in the politics of the company, according to Ehrlich, just as it seems to be becoming a fixture in today’s politics.

Advance reviews from leading scholars describe the book as ‘important’, ‘compelling’, ‘thought-provoking’, and ‘as ambitious as it is meticulous’. According to Rosane Rocher, a professor emerita at the University of Pennsylvania, ‘Ehrlich’s wonderful book will be required reading for historians of the East India Company, South Asia, and the British Empire.’ Those who are interested can read the book via Cambridge University Press’s online platform: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009367967.

Joshua Ehrlich joined UM in 2018. He holds a BA in history from the University of Chicago and an MA and a PhD in history from Harvard University. His research interests include the histories of knowledge, political thought, the British Empire, and South and Southeast Asia.

To read the news on UM’s official website, please visit the following link:
https://www.um.edu.mo/news-and-press-releases/press-release/detail/56181/

UM, Well Link Bank sign MOU and co-organise essay competition

The Centre for Macau Studies (CMS) of the University of Macau (UM) and Well Link Bank today (2 August) jointly held the MOU Signing Ceremony and Press Conference on 2023 Essay Competition for High School Students at UM. Both parties expressed hope that the signing of the memorandum of understanding (MOU) can help realise the complementarity of resources and mutual support between industry and academia. The essay competition also marks an important milestone in the cooperation between the two parties.

The MOU was signed by Agnes Lam Iok Fong, director of the CMS, and Chong Sio Fai, executive director and chief executive officer of Well Link Bank, under the witness of Long Wai Lam, registrar of UM, and Lao Pun Lap, independent non-executive director of Well Link Bank. According to Agnes Lam, with the signing of the MOU, the CMS and Well Link Bank will work together to promote the heritage and development of Chinese culture, especially in the areas of primary, secondary and higher education in Macao. The CMS, as one of the member units of the Macao Base for Primary & Secondary Education in Humanities & Social Sciences, organised the essay competition with the aim of encouraging youth people in Macao to reflect on Macao’s past and future in light of the 5000 years of civilisation of the country. It is hoped that the participants will explore, from their perspectives, how Chinese civilisation can play a role in today’s society in order to contribute to national development and the progress of human civilisation.

Chong said that history is the best teacher, as it does not only record what has happened, but also provides inspiration for future development. He added that only by remembering history can a future be built, and only by being good at inheritance can innovation be fostered. Well Link Bank is committed to fulfilling its social responsibilities by encouraging the youth to think more, make more suggestions, learn about the history and culture of the country, and then become future pillars of society who love the country and Macao.

The essay competition is co-organised by the CMS, Well Link Bank, and the Centre for Chinese History and Culture (CCHC) of UM. It aims to enable young people in Macao to gain a better understanding of Chinese history and culture, while leveraging their creativity and imagination to combine their knowledge of history with real-life experience. The CCHC will be in charge of the judging process. For more details, please visit the event website: https://cms.um.edu.mo/wlbankessaycontest/?lang=zh-hant.

The event was also attended by Huang Rui Sheng, executive director and executive vice president of Well Link Bank; Angel Tang, associate director of the CMS; Leona Kuan, representative of the director of the CCHC; and representatives of the Macao Base for Primary & Secondary Education in Humanities & Social Sciences, among others.

To read the news on UM’s official website, please visit the following link:
https://www.um.edu.mo/news-and-press-releases/press-release/detail/56173/