Interdisciplinary Research Matching Scheme of Hong Kong Baptist University has funded a joint research proposal from Institute for Advancing Translational Medicine in Bone & Joint Diseases (TMBJ), Department of Physics and Department of Biology in HKBU. The project is titled “Characterization of Linkage between Symbiotic Gut Microbes and Fatty Acid Metabolism in Rheumatoid Arthritis Patients”. The amount approved for this project (RC-IRMS/13-14/03) is HKD 2,944,160. For more than a century, symbiotic gut microbiota has been sought to relate the etiology of rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Previous research results lead to the hypothesis that symbiotic gut microbiota linking fatty acid metabolism might contribute to metabolic phenotypes of RA. This joint project is to address this hypothesis. Principal Investigator of this project is Prof. Lu Aiping, from TMBJ, School of Chinese Medicine and Prof. Cai Zongwei from Department of Chemistry, respectively.

Prof. Cai Zongwei (left) and Prof. Lu Aiping (right).