P R E S S   R E L E A S E

PROMAIL International Club has donated 2 million dollars to the Department of Anatomical and Cellular Pathology of the Faculty of Medicine, The Chinese University of Hong Kong to establish a state-of-the-art "Microarray Genome Research Laboratory".  The Laboratory will greatly boost the strength of the University in studies on genetic changes in various diseases.

Microarray technology is currently one of the newest and most advance research method for the investigation in genetic related diseases, cancers and drug sensitivity tests. The basic principle of the microarray system is to analyze gene expression pattern in ten of thousand of genes. A gene chip will be created by dotting thousand of normal cDNA clones onto a small glass slide with a surface area of 4.5 x 2.5 cm by a microarrayer. RNA obtained from the patients is then used to hybridize with the prepared gene chip in a hybridization chamber.  The hybridized chip is scanned and recorded in a computer with specialized software to analyze the data. This method speeds up the process of searching for problem genes related to disease with over-, under- or no expressions. Results obtained from the genome analysis may lead to changes in the treatment of disease or even correcting gene defects in gene therapy.  Most microarray gene chips created in western countries are based on the more common diseases among the Caucasian population. There is a lack of gene chips for the common diseases among the Asian population such as liver and nasopharyngeal cancers. The purpose of the Microarray Genome Research Laboratory is to develop gene chips for common diseases among the Asian population and thus benefit the Asian community.

In Hong Kong, cancer is the number one killer disease and liver cancer is ranked as the second and fourth most common cause of death in male and female respectively. This cancer is especially common in Hong Kong, Southern China, Taiwan and South East Asia. Professor Liew Choong Tsek and his group at the Department of Anatomical and Cellular Pathology have been working on liver cancer for the past two decades.  Since 1996 he has used few hundred microsatellite markers and finished analyzing the loss of heterozygosity in all twenty chromosomes in human liver cancer. He found high frequencies of loss of heterozygosity of p16 and few other loci in liver cancer that has not been reported before. With the establishment of the Microarray Genome Research Laboratory, specific genetic changes and unique gene expression patterns can be deciphered. More importantly, the information and results obtained from this analysis will lead to specific test for early cancer detection and open the way to gene therapy in the future. 

This is the first time that PROMAIL International Club donates a Microarray Genome Research Laboratory to a university.  Long term cooperation with the Chinese University is under discussion with plans to set up a PROMAIL Foundation for medical research at the Department of Anatomical and Cellular Pathology.