2022 Annual Scientific Meeting

Dean's Message

Welcome to the 2022 Annual Scientific Meeting of the Faculty of Dentistry. The Annual Scientific Meeting provides a forum for students and staff to showcase their recent works. It is a great opportunity to strengthen our community, stimulate critical thinking, foster innovation, and reach out to everyone who is passionate about our vision of impact through innovation, interdisciplinarity and internationalization.

The 2022 ASM features a keynote presentation on Molecular Regulation of DNA Repair Control by Professor Michael Huen, Professor of HKU School of Biomedical Sciences, and over 20 oral presentations by our Faculty staff and postgraduate students. I hope that you take advantage of the opportunity to make new friends, exchange ideas, and discuss potential collaborations to further our vision. I look forward to seeing you at the Meeting.

Professor Thomas Flemmig
Kingboard Professor in Advanced Dentistry
Dean, HKU Faculty of Dentistry

Keynote Presentation

Professor Michael S.Y. Huen, PhD
Jessie Ho Professor in Neuroscience
HKU School of Biomedical Sciences

Molecular Regulation of DNA Repair Control

Professor Huen is currently Professor and Associate Director (Research and Innovation) of School of Biomedical Sciences, and Assistant Dean (Innovation and Technology) of LKS Faculty of Medicine at The University of Hong Kong. During his post-doctoral training Professor Huen developed a strong interest for DNA repair processes, and has since been heading a research team to study how cells maintain genome stability. Because defective DNA repair fuels human tumourigenesis, by understanding the inherent differences between how normal and cancerous cells respond to DNA damage, findings from his research team can help reveal the Achilles’ heel of human cancers, guiding development of personalised medicine for future anti-cancer interventions.

Fixing damaged DNA is no simply task. Indeed, our cells are endowed with the remarkable ability to locate, amidst 3 billion base pairs of DNA, as few as one single DNA double-strand break (DSB) in matter of minutes, and launch a highly-coordinated programme to orchestrate DNA repair with the many chromatin transaction events. Our recent efforts have identified key molecular players that coordinate DSB repair with local transcriptional activities, and are also starting to unveil how nuclear actin dynamics support DSB metabolism to safeguard genome integrity.