Presenting Author
National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan (Republic of China)
Many undergraduate students will choose the similar major for their master degree after graduation. But, I am the exception. My name is Tzu-Yu Sun, a student from Taiwan Province. In 2020, I obtained my bachelor degree in the Department of Applied Chemistry of National Chi Nan University (NCNU) in Taiwan. The reason that I choose to pursue interdisciplinary studies is because of the summer vacation in 2019. At that time, I participated in the precision instruments training camp held by National Health Research Institutes (NHRI). I was deeply impressed by the professor’s enthusiastic explanation of animal experiments when I was visiting the National Laboratory Animal Center. From then on, I was more and more interested in research. To attempt to strengthen the foundation of molecular biology, I also read some papers from Professor Nan-Shan Chang in college. One reason is that Professor Chang is noted for his pioneering in tumor suppressor WWOX for its role in Alzheimer’s disease and cancer. Besides, WWOX is one of the five new risk factors in Alzheimer’s disease (AD) which announced by National Institutes of Health (NIH) in 2019. These research findings deeply fascinate me in neurodegeneration studies. In order to enhance my career development, I joined the laboratory of Professor Chang’s laboratory in National Cheng Kung University (NCKU) for master degree.
Hyaluronan (HA) plays an important role in both aesthetic medicine and arthritis treatments. Nevertheless, conformational altered HA by sonicator (HAson), and it has greater therapeutic potential than HA. Previously, our laboratory found that Zinc finger-like protein that regulates apoptosis (Zfra), a small WWOX-binding protein, suppresses tumor growth and mitigates AD progression. While HAson has the same therapeutic effects with Zfra. Parkinson’s disease (PD) is the second most common neurodegenerative disease characterized by loss of midbrain dopaminergic (DA) neurons and accumulation of Lewy bodies in the neurons. However, some of the clinical medicine, such as Levodopa and MAO inhibitor, failed to mitigate symptoms effectively and also caused side effects to PD patients. To develop an effective treatment for PD, I try my best to investigate whether HAson suppresses PD progression and mitigates the resulting symptoms. Over the years, I have gotten advanced skills in biology studies and read a lot of papers about neurodegeneration, especially dealing with PD. There are not performed specifically to measure the swimming ability of PD mice. Therefore, I designed a progressive animal behavior test, called Barnes water maze. The measurement of this device calculated the total time of the mice escaping the hole while swimming. It could also measure the olfactory experiment when the under-pool had non-water. My data suggested that HAson8 and Zfra are therapeutic potential in the future. And the further studies are underway. Last but not the least, I hope that my studies is helpful to PD patients, and I need to do my best to help our planet.