aboutMe
Dr. Kao received his Ph. D. in Microbiology in 1999 from UBC under the supervision of Professor Julian Davies and subsequent postdoctoral training at Harvard Medical School from 1999-2001. He joined the University of Hong Kong in 2001 as a Research Assistant Professor, first in HKU-Pasture Research Center, and later in the Department of Microbiology. He is now a tenured Associate Professor in the Department of Microbiology, Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine, and a Member of the State Key Laboratory of Emerging Infectious Diseases at HKU.
Dr. Kao’s research focuses on the application of chemical genetics in infectious diseases. His work on SARS-associated coronavirus (SARS-CoV), which was published in Chemistry & Biology in 2004, has established the world’s first model of chemical genetics in viruses and illustrated that chemical genetic approach could be employed to probe most, if not all, druggable targets of a pathogenic virus. Dr. Kao’s team also employed similar approach to identify new druggable targets in influenza viruses and published in Nature Biotechnology in 2010 an article detailing the groundbreaking discovery of influenza A nucleoprotein as a novel druggable antiviral target and a compound which they named nucleozin as a potent antagonist of the nucleoprotein. Most recently, Dr. Kao has extended his chemical genetic studies to virulence and antibiotics resistance in bacteria and has illustrated the potential use of anti-virulence compounds to treat MRSA infections. The research results have been published in top microbiology journals Frontiers in Microbiology, mBio, and PNAS in 2016, 2017, 2018 respectively. Dr. Kao received the Innovation Academy Award from International Consortium of Prevention and Control of Infection (ICPIC) in Geneva, Switzerland in 2017 and most recently the 2019 State Scientific and Technological Progress Award (Second-class).
ABOUT ME
Education/ Training:
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1993, B.Sc. (First Class Honors),
Department of Microbiology and Immunology, University of British Columbia -
1999, Ph.D.,
Department of Microbiology and Immunology,
University of British Columbia -
1999-2001 Post-Doctoral Research Fellow,
Harvard Medical School -
2001-2002, Research Assistant Professor,
HKU-Pasteur Research Center -
2002-2007, Research Assistant Professor & Honorary Assistant Professor,
Department of Microbiology, HKU -
2007-2012, Assistant Professor, Director of Chemical Genetics Unit, Center of Infection & Immunology,
Department of Microbiology, HKU -
2012- Present, Associate Professor, Director of Chemical Genetics Unit, Center of Infection & Immunology, Department of Microbiology, HKU
University Services:
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2013-2016, HKU Senate Membership
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2018-2021, HKU Council Membership
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2016-2022, Board of Diectors, Faculty of Dentistry
Commercial Start-ups:
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2017-Present: Co-Founder and Chief Scientific Advisor,
Articule Life Sciences Limited
Awards and Grants
-2019 State Scientific and Technological Progress Award (Second-Class)
-2017 1st Hubert Tour Prize - International Consortium on Prevention and Infection Control (ICPIC) Innovation Academy Award at Geneva, Switzerland
-2010 Faculty Outstanding Research Award
-2008 International Association of Dental Researches/ GlaxoSmithKline Innovation in Oral Care Award
-Received Over 47 Millions HKD Research Fundings
-Over 25 millions HKD are contract research/ commercial grant/ private donations
PI, Co-I of numerous GRF, HMRF, AOE grants
RESEARCH INTERESTS
Chemical Genetics
Genetics play a fundamental role in biological studies, classic genetics involves the "one gene, one phenotype" or "one gene, one protein" relationship. Mutation of the gene alters the corresponding protein and ultimately leads to potential functional changes. Chemical genetics employs similar concept, but instead of manipulating with the gene, the intervention of chemical leads to another phenotypic changes. Chemical genetics modulate protein functions, leaving the genetic elements of the organism unchanged.
Anti-microbials Hunt
Anti-microbial resistance in microbes are a major issue in our modern medical settings, apart from the natural selections by the microbes for strains to develop anti-microbial resistance, the drop in novel anti-microbials in the past few decades also played a major factor.
Antibiotics are good examples of chemical genetics applications, through the introduction of small molecule compounds (antibiotics), the phenotypes of the bacteria are being altered, eg. fail of topoisomerase function, inhibition of bacterial ribosome functions etc.
Discovery of novel small molecule compounds pave ways for potential new anti-microbial drugs to replenish the long drought anti-microbial pool.
Natural Product Hunt
Synthetic small molecules can indeed provide us well defined chemicals for screening, but nature also provide us with another diverse chemical compound library.
High-throughput Screening
With diverse chemical libraries and existing microbial problems, we can screen through tens of thousands small molecule compounds and identify hits where we can further refine our studies for potential drug candidates.
Anti-Virulence Hunt
Anti-virulence is a new non-antibiotics approach in bacterial therapy. Our lab has successfully demonstrated that by suppressing different virulence factors expression in S. aureus, the outcome of the infected mice can be improved. A lot more can be explored in this area and we are taking a deeper look into various virulence genes molecular control to see how those could be translated into improving clinical outcomes of patients.