CityU iGEM – Great news from our recent meeting with Prof. Chun Kit Kwok

Maria Babak shared a post by CityU iGEM, on LinkedIn:

“So cool that the strategy of my CityU iGEM team to detect counterfeit Bevacizumab (Avastin) got a boost thanks to Dr. Chun Kit Kwok‘s expert insights. CityU iGEM is diving into aptamer synthesis outsourcing, enhancing specificity, and optimizing binding affinity to tackle this critical issue in cancer treatment. Stay tuned for more developments!”

Quoting CityU iGEM‘s post:

“Great news from our recent meeting with Prof. Chun Kit Kwok, a respected researcher in RNA structure and aptamer development! This meeting helped us refine our strategy for detecting counterfeit Bevacizumab (Avastin), a critical concern in cancer treatment.

Dr. Kwok gave us some amazing insights:

• Outsource Aptamer Synthesis: To speed up development and save costs, we’re exploring outsourcing aptamer synthesis, potentially from China companies.

• Specificity is Key: Our aptamer needs to be highly specific to Bevacizumab, so we’ll investigate known impurities and test aptamer in biological liquids to ensure it can detect counterfeit versions.

• Optimizing Aptamer Binding: We’ll be using literature-derived aptamer sequences and focusing on optimizing their binding affinity – a novel approach that’s both efficient and promising.

• Modeling and Synthesizing: Next up, we’ll model and synthesize different aptamer variants to find the best performer.

• Looking Ahead: We’re already planning a follow-up meeting with Dr. Kwok to get his expert feedback before we move on to synthesis.”

Source: Maria Babak/LinkedIn and CityU iGEM/LinkedIn

Dr. Maria (Masha) Babak is the Head of The Babak Lab and an Assistant Professor at the City University of Hong Kong. She earned her Ph.D. in bioinorganic chemistry from the University of Vienna in 2014. From 2015 to 2020, Dr. Babak was a postdoctoral research fellow at the National University of Singapore under the mentorship of Prof. Wee Han Ang, where she developed a strong passion for drug discovery and drug target identification. In November 2020, she joined the City University of Hong Kong as an assistant professor. Dr. Babak received the Graeme Hanson-AsBIC Early Career Award in 2022.

Her research interests are at the intersection of chemistry, biology, and medicine, with a focus on the discovery and preclinical development of anticancer drugs for resistant and aggressive cancers with limited treatment options, such as malignant pleural mesothelioma and brain metastases.