The Centre for Immunology & Infection (C2i) organized a tour of its facilities on April 29 to mark its soft opening. 

Guided by Malik Peiris, Managing Director, and Roberto Bruzzone, Co-Director, distinguished guests such as Mr Alexandre Giorgini, Consul General of France in Hong Kong and Macau, Prof. John Kao, Head of Biomedical Technology Cluster (HKSTP), and Mr Hailson Yu, COO of HKU Innovation Holdings Limited, have visited the brand-new laboratories based in the Hong Kong Science Park. They met the staff and were introduced to the state-of-the-art equipment that will help advance biomedical research on both local and global scale.

C2i is the fruit of a long-standing partnership of more than 20 years between the LKS Faculty of Medicine of the University of Hong Kong (HKUMed) and the Institut Pasteur that started with the establishment of the HKU-Pasteur Research Pole. 

This major initiative, funded by the Innovation and Technology Fund, adopts novel strategies to identify and contain emerging infectious diseases and transform Hong Kong and the Greater Bay Area into a global hub of knowledge and research.

C2i's work is centered around four major research programs to face public health challenges and make Hong Kong a global center of excellence for precision medicine population strategies and innovative interventions targeting emerging infectious diseases. 

They aim to characterise immune responses to infectious agents and their components in a healthy Asian population and develop new vaccine platforms for influenza, new strategies for mosquito-borne viruses and new treatments for lethal respiratory virus infections.

• Healthy Human Global Project

• Novel vaccine platforms for Influenza

• Platform technologies for responding to lethal respiratory infections

• Mosquito-borne viruses: Epidemiology, Pathogenesis and Interventions

Taken together, the four programmes of C2i will address major unmet global and local public health needs and enhance Hong Kong’s knowledge-based economy, while providing state-of-the-art training for the local population. Ultimately, the outcomes are expected to advance health by improving the effectiveness of future public health initiatives. 

You can follow C2i’s activity on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and look for job opening on its LinkedIn page!