A research team led by Professor Xiang David Li from the Department of Chemistry at The University of Hong Kong (HKU), in collaboration with researchers from the Shenzhen Bay Laboratory and Tsinghua University, has made a breakthrough in epigenetic drug discovery. The team has successfully developed a first-in-class chemical inhibitor that precisely and selectively targets the ATAC complex, a critical cellular “switch operator” that activates tumour-promoting genes, opening a novel therapeutic avenue for non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). The findings were recently published in the top-tier journal Nature Chemical Biology, and multiple international patent applications have been filed.

A study into the long-term health impacts of coronavirus, led by experts from the University of Leicester, Imperial College London and University College London, has found changes in the blood after COVID-19 that might pinpoint patients at risk of ongoing lung disease

Scientists have developed a model which can identify small mammals from their footprints. These animals are often crucially important to an ecosystem but hard to monitor, and many species which play very different roles in an ecosystem are very hard to tell apart without DNA analysis, which is expensive, invasive, and stressful for the animal. Now, by collecting images of footprints from two near-identical species of sengi — formerly called elephant shrews because of their long noses — and training a model to tell the difference between them, scientists have found a cheaper, simpler way of keeping an eye on these tiny mammals.  

Building on over a decade of research into the bioactive components of Chansu, the team led by Professors Ma Hongyue and Duan Jin'ao from Nanjing University of Chinese Medicine collaborated with Professor Xu Huaqiang's team at the Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica, Chinese Academy of Sciences. The research team selected key components from natural toad venoms with distinct medicinal properties (spirit-awakening, hallucinogenic, and detoxifying)—namely 5-OH-DMT, 5-MeO-DMT, and 5-OH-TMT—to systematically analyze their structure-target-efficacy-toxicity-property relationships. At atomic resolution, this study revealed the molecular mechanisms by which toad tryptamines selectively activate various serotonin receptor (5-HTR) subtypes under different medicinal property labels.

Scientists discovered how a brain-specific enzyme adds branches to protein-linked sugar chains, enabling them to grow into more complex structures. The study shows that this branching step is essential for further glycan extension, helping explain molecular processes linked to neurological disorders such as demyelination and brain tumors.