Academic Seminar: Hong Kong Genome Project (HKGP)
On April 13th, Professor Ken Sung Wing-kin, Honorary Chief Bioinformatics Officer of the Hong Kong Genome Institute (HKGI), was invited to the Centre for Artificial Intelligence Driven Drug Discovery (AIDD), and delivered a scientific presentation on the topic of the "Hong Kong Genome Project (HKGP)" in the conference room N47A of Wui Chi Building. The presentation was chaired by Dr. Li Kefeng, Associate Professor of the AIDD Centre, and representatives from the AIDD Centre, including teachers and doctoral students, participated in the presentation.
The presentation was divided into four parts. Firstly, Professor Sung introduced the development history and vision of the HKGP. In the second part, Professor Sung explored why the HKGP is needed. Starting from the perspective of patients with genetic diseases, Professor Sung presented the case of Anna, a patient with Alstrom syndrome, and demonstrated that genetic disease patients often need to spend a long time diagnosing their diseases, which can easily delay treatment and miss early intervention opportunities. In the third part, Professor Sung briefly described the scope and daily operation of the HKGP project. The HKGP aims to sequence 50,000 genomes within five years. In daily operations, Professor Sung shared the efforts of the HKGI in collecting, protecting, and analyzing patient sample data. In the fourth part, Professor Sung systematically introduced the relevant information of the HKGP bioinformatics platform and demonstrated the working process of the platform using examples.
Introduction: Ken Sung Wing-kin, a professor at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, is the recognized bioinformatics leader at the Hong Kong Genome Institute (HKGI), and is responsible for bioinformatics analysis and data management to ensure that relevant data is effectively supported for clinical applications under the Hong Kong Genome Project (HKGP). He also leads a team to design and implement the project-specific data platform, striving to ensure data secrecy and security to promote genomic medicine research and development. Professor Sung has over 25 years of experience in research and development in the field of algorithmics and bioinformatics. Prior to his current position, he was a professor at the National University of Singapore (NUS) and served as the Head of the Genetics and Genomics Research Institute in Singapore. Professor Sung is a leading expert in the field of bioinformatics and has published over 290 high-quality papers in various scientific journals and magazines, including Bioinformatics, Cell, Nature, Nature Genetics, and Nucleic Research. He has also received numerous awards and accolades for his contributions to the field, including the Best Paper Award at the Forum of Information Technology (FIT) in Japan in 2003, the Singapore National Science Award (NSA) in 2006, and the Singapore Young Investigator Award in 2008. Additionally, Professor Sung is also a professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and has recently focused his research on understanding the relationship between genetic mutations, especially structural mutations, and diseases.
