Topic: The Significance of Magnesium in Osteogenesis and Its Applications in Orthopedics

Speaker:  Dr. Kelvin Yeung

Time: 10:00am-12:00am, (Wed.) 15 May, 2013

Venue: Room 468, Lee Hsun Building,  IMR  CAS

Welcome to attend!

 

The Significance of Magnesium in Osteogenesis and Its Applications in Orthopaedics

Yeung KWK¹, Wong HM¹, Y Zhao¹, Chu PK², SL Wu², Cheung KMC¹

1 Department of Orthopaedics and Traumatology, Queen Mary Hospital, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China

2 Department of Physics and Materials Science, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China

Magnesium ions can affect many cellular functions including the transport of potassium and calcium ions, whilst it also modulates signal transduction, energy metabolism and cell proliferation. It was recently reported that the presence of magnesium in the bone system is beneficial to bone growth and play a key role in bone remodelling and skeletal development.  Literatures have shown that the presence of magnesium ions is able to stimulate bone growth and bone healing by enhancing the osteoblast and osteoclast activities. Magnesium is found to be actively involved in the mineralization process to control both bone formation and resorption. Our recent study has demonstrated that the release of magnesium ions can stimulate the expression of ostegenic genes and proteins in-vitro as well as bone formation in-vivo, respectively.  It reported that the released magnesium ions could up-regulate the expression of alkaline phosphatase (ALP), osteocalcin (OCN), osteopontin (OPN), Runx2 by 6 folds higher than that of the control in-vitro. In addition, the volume of newly formed bone in the treated sample was about 8 times higher. Furthermore, the potential applications of these findings in orthopaedics will also be discussed in this lecture.

Biography of Kelvin Yeung

Dr. K Yeung received his B.Sc. (Hons) in Materials Science from City University of Hong Kong by 1998. Then, he was admitted to the Faculty of Medicine, The University of Hong Kong for his post-graduate study. He was awarded M.Phil and Ph.D. degrees in medicine by 2001 and 2005, respectively. Upon his graduation, he was appointed as a Post-doctoral Research Fellow and Honorary Assistant Professor in the same department. After one year in post-doctoral training, he has been promoted to Research Assistant Professor. During the study period at the Department of Orthopaedics & Traumatology, his PhD study had received numbers of award and scholarship from local and regional competitions such as Young Scientist Award 2005 held by Hong Kong Institution of Science. Also, he was awarded with AO Fellowship to allow his having about a year overseas training at AO Development Institute, AO Foundation International during his Ph.D. study. With respect to his publications, he has published more than 90 peer-reviewed journal papers at the top-journals of the field together with more than 38 filed full patents in various countries. His h-index is 16 in Scopus. The total amount of grants and sponsors directly arising from his projects in PI capacity is over HK$9M. Furthermore, he obtained 18 prizes and awards from local and international competitions and conferences.