Posted on July 1, 2023
We are honored to announce that Nobel laureate Dr. Bruce Beutler will join BIOHK2023 in September this year. This would be a great opportunity to meet face-to-face with Dr. Beutler and other pioneering scientists in immunology, and it will also allow us to better understand the mystery of aging and its impact on our lives.
Dr. Bruce Beutler is an American immunologist and geneticist. He received his undergraduate degree from the University of California San Diego in 1976, and his MD degree from the University of Chicago in 1981. While he was a postdoctoral fellow and assistant professor at the Rockefeller University (1983-1986), he focused on innate immunity and isolated mouse tumor necrosis factor (TNF), and was the first to recognize TNF as a key executor of the inflammatory response. In 1986, he returned to Dallas as an HHMI investigator, to design recombinant inhibitors of TNF. He also used TNF as a biological endpoint in order to identify the receptor for bacterial lipopolysaccharide (LPS). In 2000, Dr. Bruce Beutler developed the largest mouse mutagenesis program in the world, and applied a forward genetic approach to decipher the signaling pathways activated by TLRs. He also identified many other molecules with non-redundant function in the immune response. In 2011, Dr. Bruce Beutler received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his discoveries concerning the activation of innate immunity. He also developed a means of instantly identifying mutations responsible for both quantitative and qualitative phenotypes. This allowed rapid discovery of many new components of the immune system.
BIOHK2023 is one of the largest international biotechnology exhibitions in Asia, and it is an excellent window to showcase cutting-edge technologies and high-end biotechnology products to the world. In addition to meeting the Nobel laureate, you will also have the opportunity to hear from other leaders in biotechnology who will share their views and latest innovations. If you are interested in the biotechnology field, this is a great opportunity not to be missed!
On the 30th of May, Hong Kong Biotechnology Organization (HKBIO) had the honor of inviting Dr. Bruce Beutler to participate in a seminar held at the Charles K. Kao Center in Hong Kong Science Park (HKSTP) on the topic “The Scientific Quest for Longevity”. During the seminar, Dr. Bruce Beutler described how he successfully isolated mouse alpha-TNF, a protein secreted by macrophages in response to lipopolysaccharide (LPS), which mediated many LPS effects, including systemic inflammation, shock and death.
The seminar was very lively as Dr. Bruce Beutler answered every question from the audience, sharing his and his colleagues’ various explorations in the study of LPS receptors. They succeeded in identifying the Toll-like receptor-4 (TLR-4) and revealed an entire family of innate immune receptors that recognize molecular signatures of infection. This experience led them to create and study many other immunophenotypes by random germline mutagenesis. In recent years, his lab has also developed the Automated Meiotic Mapping (AMM) platform, which makes the positioning of clones become a real-time procedure. The application of AMM enabled them to attribute approximately 30,000 phenotypes to a single mutation in a relatively short time, which would have taken thousands of years in the past. This major breakthrough allowed them to identify most of the genes required for strong immunity, while also opens a door to the systematic search for disease-modifying mutations. This technology is the main platform of his new company LongevityX.
Dr. Hank Wu, co-founder of Longevity X, also shared his vision for the company and how we can derive greater value from something that cannot be measured by money, such as time. It was exciting to see how the vision of Longevity X will be beneficial to all of humanity, which was much appreciated by the audience who left with high expectations for the future of bioscience.
