A groundbreaking study revealing the role played by Cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR) in female fertility and infertility by Prof. Chan Hsiao Chang of The Chinese University of Hong Kong was recently featured by Nature China, a new web-based publication of the Nature Publishing Group, as one of the best research from Hong Kong and Mainland China.
Prof. Chan Hsiao Chang is professor of physiology and director of the Epithelial Cell Biology Research Centre of the CUHK Faculty of Medicine. Her groundbreaking work was conducted at the Epithelial Cell Biology Research Centre and in collaboration with Zhejiang Academy of Medical Sciences. Her article 'Involvement of CFTR in Uterine Bicarbonate Secretion and the Fertilizing Capacity of Sperm' was first published in the October 2003 issue of science journal Nature Cell Biology.
CFTR is a cAMP-activated chloride channel expressed in a wide variety of epithelial cells, mutations of which are responsible for the hallmark defective chloride secretion observed in cystic fibrosis (CF). Although CFTR has been implicated in bicarbonate secretion, its ability to directly mediate bicarbonate secretion of any physiological significance has not been shown. Prof. Chan demonstrated that endometrial epithelial cells possess a CFTR-mediated bicarbonate transport mechanism. Co-culture of sperm with endometrial cells treated with antisense oligonucleotide against CFTR, or with bicarbonate secretion-defective CF epithelial cells, resulted in lower sperm capacitation and egg-fertilizing ability. These results are consistent with the critical role of CFTR in controlling uterine bicarbonate secretion and the fertilizing capacity of sperm, providing a link between defective CFTR and lower female fertility in CF.
Nature China highlights the best research from Hong Kong and Mainland China in all scientific and medical disciplines to give scientists worldwide an insight into the latest research from both places. In the past decade, the output of research papers from China in the Thompson ISI database has soared from 10,000 papers a year to over 80,000, putting China's output of scientific research at the same level (in numbers) as the UK and Japan. The number of very high-impact papers (citations in excess of 20) has increased ten-fold to several hundred over the last five years.
Prof. Chan's contributions to epithelial cell biology have brought her a number of awards including the National Natural Sciences Award of China in 1997, Distinguished Young Investigator Award by the National Natural Science Foundation of China in 2000, and more recently, the 2007-08 Senior Research Fellowship of The Croucher Foundation.