CMTR PhD student Mr. Aston Jiaxi WU (3rd from the left) won the "Best Poster Presentation Award" in the 2nd China Conference on Autophagy (Hangzhou) held on 10 - 12 October 2019 for his outstanding poster presentation. Aston’s work is entitled "Altered ER-mitochondria contacts induce mitochondrial calcium overloading and impair mitophagy in AD models". 

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the most common dementia that affects millions of people worldwide. The lack of understanding of the pathogenic mechanism hinders the development of effective AD treatment. Recent evidence suggests that dysregulated mitochondria calcium signaling may play a significant role in AD development, but the underlying mechanism remains elusive. The presented work described how mitochondria calcium dysregulation impaired the mitochondria quality control mechanism and leads to metabolism problems in AD. As defective mitochondria is a common pathological phenomenon in neurodegenerative disease, this research discovery may open a new avenue for future therapeutic approaches.

Mr. Wu is currently a member of a research team of the Mr. and Mrs. Ko Chi Ming Centre for Parkinson's Disease Research (CPDR) led by Prof. Min Li and Dr. King-Ho Cheung. The team is dedicating to explore and identify novel molecular targets and Chinese medicine compounds for the developing of therapeutic strategy to treat neurodegeneration.