Research

Research News
25 Mar 2021
Role Of Gut Microbiota In Travel-Related Acquisition Of Extended Spectrum β-lactamase-Producing Enterobacteriaceae
Methods
Results
Conclusions
24 Mar 2021
Ethnicity Associations With Food Sensitization Are Mediated By Gut Microbiota Development In The First Year Of Life

18 Feb 2021
HKU-Pasteur In Best of Cell Reports 2020 List
Cell Reports anounced its Best of 2020 list, highlighting the jounrnal's major and most impactful publications of the past year.
Amongst 12 publications, from axonal ribosomes to imaging of brain activity during human behavior, and from a Review article on microglia to new roles for p53 in cancer immunology, we can find Tomas Lv and Chris Mok's paper Cross-Reactive Antibody Response Between Sars-Cov-2 and Sars-Cov Infections.
Summary:
The World Health Organization has declared the ongoing outbreak of COVID-19, which is caused by a novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, a pandemic. There is currently a lack of knowledge about the antibody response elicited from SARS-CoV-2 infection. One major immunological question concerns antigenic differences between SARS-CoV-2 and SARS-CoV. We address this question by analyzing plasma from patients infected by SARS-CoV-2 or SARS-CoV and from infected or immunized mice. Our results show that, although cross-reactivity in antibody binding to the spike protein is common, cross-neutralization of the live viruses may be rare, indicating the presence of a non-neutralizing antibody response to conserved epitopes in the spike. Whether such low or non-neutralizing antibody response leads to antibody-dependent disease enhancement needs to be addressed in the future. Overall, this study not only addresses a fundamental question regarding antigenicity differences between SARS-CoV-2 and SARS-CoV but also has implications for immunogen design and vaccine development.
10 Feb 2021
Cupric Oxide Coating That Rapidly Reduces Infection by SARS-CoV-2 via Solids
Leo Poon, Co-Director at HKU-Pasteur, and Alex Chin, Alex Chin, investigator in Professor Poon’s team, just published the new developments of their projects on surface coating conducted with Professor William Ducker of the Department of Engineering at Virginia Tech.
In this follow-up study, Prof. Ducker’s group has developed another copper-bearing coating containing cupric oxide (CuO) that targets to reduce the infectivity of SARS-CoV-2 on a contaminated surface.
The project resulted in the development of a porous and hydrophilic coating that can be coated on smooth surfaces such as glass. The hydrophilic property of the coating is long-lasting and allows efficient imbibition of a droplet to increase the surface area of contact.
The coating could reduce the infectivity of SARS-CoV-2 by 99.9% in 1 hour, whereas control glass without coating required 2 days to achieve the same level of reduction in virus infectivity. The efficiency was even higher with a thicker coating that reduced the infectivity of the virus within 30 min. The team believe this coating can be applied to common touch surfaces to reduce the risk of COVID-19 transmission via indirect contact.
>>> Read the full publication: Cupric Oxide Coating That Rapidly Reduces Infection by SARS-CoV-2 via Solids
26 Jan 2021
Investigation of the antibody landscape in children: SARS-CoV-2 infected children have lower levels of antibodies than adults
Children are less clinically affected by SARS-CoV-2 infection than adults with the majority of cases being mild or asymptomatic and the differences in infection outcomes are poorly understood. The kinetics, magnitude and landscape of the antibody response may impact the clinical severity and serological diagnosis of COVID-19. Thus, a comprehensive investigation of the antibody landscape in children and adults is needed.
This investigation has been conducted by Asmaa Hachim and Niloufar Kavian within Sophie Valkenburg’s team in a pre-print publication published online on January 3rd. The research team tested 254 plasma from 122 children with symptomatic and asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infections in Hong Kong. Adult COVID-19 patients and pre-pandemic controls were included for comparison.
Therefore, this is the most comprehensive study to date of the magnitude, specificity and duration of SARS-CoV-2 specific antibodies in children.
The results show that children have lower levels of antibodies to the majority of proteins overall, with minor responses to non-structural proteins. The study highlights that SARS-CoV-2 antibody response in children is highly diverse, which may be an important factor in driving control of SARS-CoV-2 infection.
Read the publication online: “The SARS-CoV-2 antibody landscape is lower in magnitude for structural proteins, diversified for accessory proteins and stable long-term in children”, medRxiv 2021.01.03.21249180.
12 Jan 2021
Follow-up: Project On Sewage Helps Uncover Nine Infections In Hong Kong
The University of Hong Kong sewage surveillance project involving HKU-Pasteur research teams will extend its screening capacity after successfully uncovering hidden COVID-19 carriers in two housing blocks in Hong Kong. Standard operating procedure are finalised to trigger mandatory testing of all residents in a block if sewage checks reveal two consecutive positive results or two positive results over three days.
