The International Conference 2025 for Drug Discovery and Development, organized by the Laboratory for Synthetic Chemistry and Chemical Biology Limited (LSCCB), took place successfully in Hong Kong from March 17 to 19, 2025. The three-day event facilitated in-depth discussions on various topics, including synthetic chemistry, chemical biology, diagnostics, theranostics, and multi-omics. During the conference, Stephanie presented on the team’s recent research, focusing on the use of a chemical biology approach to discover a small molecule inhibitor targeting the oncometabolite AGPAT4. Special thanks to Prof. CM Che for the invitation to speak at the event.
Author: sma lab
Young Academy of Sciences Summit
Happy to have the opportunity to co-organize and serve as a moderator for one of the sessions in the Young Academy of Sciences Summit sub-conference on “From Cancer Discovery Science to Therapeutic Innovation”.
SMA LAB XMAS 2024
The team gathered to celebrate the spirit of Christmas, which I like to define as “togetherness”. It is in the thought to which you put into thinking about others. We are thankful to have each other’s support in the lab throughout the year, keeping each other sane through the ups and downs of research.
We also wish to take this opportunity to congratulate Sheree on passing her PhD oral defense with flying colors (Dr. Lam!) and welcoming our 4 new PhD students Angela, Billy, Changmo and Yuxin as well as our new RA Rafter and RAP Gladys!
A wonderful lab XMAS party with secret santa gift exchange, ping pong challenge to win a chance to skip lab meeting presentation and celebrating Johnson’s XX birthday! Thankful for this bunch!
S M A under a beautiful sunset 🌇
Profs Paul and Dulabh Monga’s Visit to the School
The lab is happy to have the opportunity to host Profs Paul and Dulabh Monga’s visit to the School of Biomedical Sciences at HKUMed on 18 Dec 2024. We have followed Paul’s work on liver regeneration and liver cancer over the years and it’s great to have a chance to share with him some of the team’s ongoing projects!
International Workshop on Cancer Systems Biology (ICSB) 2024 at SUSTech
14-15 Dec 2024 – Thank you Prof Ying Xu for the invitation to this year’s ICSB held at Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech) in Shenzhen. A weekend well spent meeting people whose work we have followed on PubMed but first time meeting in person! Stephanie shared the team’s latest work on therapeutic targeting of HCC cell plasticity. 
Hepatology – in press
Our DGKH story now in press in Hepatology 🙌🥳
Read all about it here (PMID 39663958) and its accompanying editorial written by Prof. Guisheng Song of the University of Minnesota also published in the same journal (PMID 39666890). 
29th HKUMed Research Postgraduate Symposium
4-5 Dec 2024 – Congratulations to our two PhD students Venus and Angel on getting best oral and best poster presentation awards at this year’s HKUMed Research Postgraduate Symposium. Very well done and proud of you!
HKUMed Faulty Newsletter Feature
Our newly funded RGC Theme-Based Research Scheme team and project was featured in the Dec 2024 issue of the HKUMed Faculty Newsletter. Thankful to have this opportunity to work with a team of multi-talents, transversing the fields of cancer biology, immunology, synthetic biology, chemical biology, computational biology and hepatobiliary surgery.
HKU Endowed Professorships
The ceremony for the 13th Inauguration of Endowed Professorships at HKU was celebrated on 25 Nov 2024 at Loke Yew Hall, HKU. Stephanie is blessed to be endowed with the Jimmy and Emily Tang Professorship in Molecular Genetics and is deeply grateful to Dr. Jimmy Tang and Mrs. Emily Tang for their generous gift and trust. 
Prof Ernesto Guccione’s Visit to the School
The lab had a great time hosting Ernesto at the School of Biomedical Sciences in HKUMed on 13 Nov 2024. I have followed his work for years, and it was nice to finally have a chance to sit down and talk about science! We ended the day with some horse racing at the HK Jockey Club and Typhoon 8 with dinner on the house!
