Our journey started when we decided to resolve the catastrophe of liver fibrosis. But what is liver fibrosis?
Well, Liver fibrosis is when scar tissue builds up in the liver and replaces healthy tissue. This is a problem because it prevents the liver from functioning correctly and can block blood flow through the liver.
In Hong Kong, Liver cancer was the fifth most common cancer and accounted for 5.1% of all new cancer cases in 2020. It was the fourth most common cancer in men and the eleventh most common cancer in women. The crude incidence rates were 36.9 for males and 11.7 for females per 100,000 population of respective sex. The age-standardised incidence rates* were 18.2 for males and 5.6 for females per 100 000 standard population. Liver cancer was also the third leading cause of cancer deaths in Hong Kong. In 2021, a total of 1447 people died from this cancer, accounting for 9.6% of all cancer deaths. The crude death rates were 30.8 for males and 10.1 for females per 100,000 population of respective sex. The age-standardised death rates of liver cancer were 14.0 for males and 4.1 for females per 100 000 standard population.
Number of registered deaths and crude death rate of liver cancer by sex
Age-standardised incidence rate of liver cancer by sex, 1983-2020
Number of new cases and crude incidence rate of liver cancer by sex, 2001-2020
Moreover, liver fibrosis is not easy to cure, studies show that it can take 5-10 years to recover from liver fibrosis depending on what's causing the liver fibrosis and how severe it is, their life expectancy while having liver fibrosis at most is about 20 years. Therefore, people are seeking another liver from others to have liver transplants as an alternative solution. However, it is nearly impossible to receive a liver from others. Hong Kong has one of the lowest rates of donating liver for liver transplants, there are only 4.5 people who are willing to give away their livers to others, and the average waiting time for a liver is about 43 months, Even if others want to donate a liver to you,we need to see if both the donor and the patient have the same blood type,making it inaccessible.
Motivated by this situation, our team decided to do further studies on liver fibrosis and how to reverse the progress of liver fibrosis.
We exchanged our idea with Dr WONG Chak Lui, Carmen who is an Associate Professor at the University of Hong Kong, Department of Pathology, we paid a visit to her laboratory and we learned about her studies on liver fibrosis, she gave us some amazing ideas and we also read some studies about liver fibrosis and knowing that red blood cells can be used to carry liposome， as a result, we decided to create a type of red blood cells to transport our GATA4 protein.
To seek more perception of others and to improve our project. We showcase our ideas to other teams.
On 15/7/2023, we paid a visit to team PuiChing-Macau (481417), because both of our teams' topics were about medical health so we were able to communicate with each other easily and exchange our ideas together. Also, we shared our perspectives on others' work and gave comments to the other side.
On 20/9/2023, we also had the honour of showcasing our innovative concepts to academic establishments at the event hosted by the highly esteemed University of Hong Kong (469635). At the event, we exchanged our ideas with students at the University of Hong Kong and it helped a lot with our project.
In conclusion, these events provide us with opportunities to connect with students, professors and researchers from various backgrounds and exchange insightful ideas.
Knowing that more people should know about our project and the importance of our project. We hosted events for both secondary and primary students to promote our project.
In August June 2023 we invited the primary school department (Pui Ching Primary School, Hong Kong) to our school laboratory to learn more about our project. In the event, we taught the primary students to use microscopes to observe bacteria and taught them knowledge on chemistry, biology, and biochemistry that they wouldn't be able to learn in primary school. We also introduce our project to them.
On 9/10/2023, we invited secondary students from our school who are interested in science to participate in another event hosted by our team members. During the event, we demonstrated our work and expressed the paramount of our project. Knowing that giving a speech is not enough, we also instructed them to experience part of our experiment, for example, we taught them about the theory and how SDS PAGE works so they could also have a chance to try it and we elucidated our project as they have more knowledge based on science.
We also put effort into advertising our project inside our school, we requested our school broadcasting channel to broadcast our promotion video recorded by our team crew so that the whole school community can know our project and exactly what we are doing.