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Elizabeth Cheung

Hong Kong researchers are working to turn bacteria into drugs to treat disorders such as autism and dementia and aim to start trials on people as early as next year.
The Microbiota I-Centre, a research facility owned by the Chinese University of Hong Kong, announced that it had set up the first laboratory in the Greater Bay Area with a controlled environment for microorganisms and a focus on studies related to neurocognitive behaviour.
The centre, one of 29 government-funded R&D facilities under the InnoHK initiative in the Hong Kong Science Park, aims to look for therapeutics for depression, autism and dementia through alternative approaches.
“At the moment there are no solutions for these diseases,” said Professor Ng Siew Chien, the centre’s co-director and a top gastroenterologist.
“We see that many children and teenagers in schools also suffer from depression, being labelled and having to take antidepressants.”
Tens of thousands of people in Hong Kong are believed to suffer from the three conditions the centre is looking into. The researchers said around 10,000 people in the city had autism, while more than 500,000 people suffered from depression.
With the city’s population ageing, at least 100,000 people are estimated to be affected by dementia.
The researchers have isolated 200 to 300 types of bacteria with therapeutic potential, and hope one day to develop them into medications.
“[Ordinary] drugs are chemicals, which worries many people for their side effects, and their development in general is also very costly,” said Ng, who is also a professor at the university’s department of medicine and therapeutics.
She said she believed that drugs made of bacteria were more likely to be accepted by patients as they were natural. Ng said the price of these medications could be “attractive”, but she did not elaborate.

Ng said some big pharmaceutical firms in the United States had been making drugs from bacteria for the past 40 years, but they focused mainly on gut diseases.
She said her team would be among the first using this treatment approach to look into diseases outside the gut.
Experiments with mice were expected to be completed by the end of the year, while the team would conduct human trials in the two years from 2025.
Both Ng and centre co-director Professor Francis Chan Ka-leung, also a top gastroenterologist, said a person’s overall health was closely linked to their gut.
“The gut is our second brain. Our gut controls the health and diseases outside our digestive system,” Chan said.
The global human microbiome market – referring products and services related to the use of microorganisms on or in the body to improve health – is expected to have huge economic potential.
The market is forecast to be worth more than US$6.4 billion in 2032, from US$824.4 million in 2023, according to a report.
To study the effectiveness of bacteria in treating diseases, the centre’s laboratory was designed to be gnotobiotic, meaning microorganisms there were carefully controlled. Germ-free mice were used for experiments.
“Germ-free mice are a prerequisite to tell us whether a certain type of bacteria is useful or harmful,” Chan said.
“In the gnotobiotic lab, we can inject specific bacteria or microbes [into the mice] … so the surroundings do not interfere with the experiments.”
Chan said it was not easy to operate a gnotobiotic facility, as strict procedures were needed to prevent contamination by unwanted microorganisms.
“If one step is done inaccurately, experiment data collected in the past few years would be invalid,” he said.
Everyone entering the lab must be fully covered in protective gear to avoid bringing in contamination. Air for the mice is also filtered. They also consume sterile feed specifically for germfree mice.
Special hardware has also been installed to observe the behaviour of the mice before and after microbiome treatment.
Chan said they had visited top gnotobiotic labs in the US and Canada to learn how to run the facility.
The research team is now collaborating with two multinational pharmaceutical firms, and Chan said they hoped to set up a research and manufacturing facility in the Lok Ma Chau Loop, a zone near the border with mainland China earmarked for innovation and technology use.
“We can transform Hong Kong into a driving force of microbiome industry in the Greater Bay Area,” he said.


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Microbiota I-Centre researchers have isolated 200 to 300 types of bacteria with therapeutic potential and hope one day to develop them into medications


Microbiota I-Centre researchers have isolated 200 to 300 types of bacteria with therapeutic potential and hope one day to develop them into medications.
