School of Science Division of Life Science 17 Receptor Based Drug Development from Chinese Herbal Medicine Supervisor: LI Ning / LIFS Co-supervisor: XUE Hong / LIFS Student: LAU Ming Ho / BIBU Course: UROP1100, Summer Insomnia has always been a serious public health problem, affecting millions of people. Compared to common insomnia drugs like benzodiazepines, certain Chinese herbal medicine can manage insomnia with fewer side effects. The mechanism of action is mainly associated with the activation of GABAA receptors, which create sedative and hypnotic effects when the binding sites interact with agonists like GABA neurotransmitters. In this review paper, two kinds of GABA receptors will be introduced. Several sedative herbal medicines and their mechanism will be listed and explained. Some modern extraction procedures of herbal drugs like fractionation, chromatographic identification, and diverse identification will also be included. Chinese Herbal Medicine for General Health Supervisor: LIANG Chun / LIFS Student: CHAN Yi Kai / BCB Course: UROP1100, Fall UROP2100, Spring Inulin and stevioside are both acclaimed sugar substitutes in food industry since they manifest a healthier lifestyle to customers. Besides their competent sweetness, they have been reported to possess certain antidiabetic effects subject to the practical formulas of administration. And the single-ingredient antidiabetic effect of both inulin and stevioside were well-verified by my experiments conducted during UROP 1100. Besides the intriguing antidiabetic effects of these two natural sweeteners, their anti hyperlipidemic effects are also studied by several papers. (Huang, 2016) (Ahmad, 2018) Therefore, in these semester, non-alcoholic fatty liver HepG cells were exploited as a hyperlipidemic model undergoing regular treatments with different concentrations of inulin and stevioside to further investigate and characterise the anti-hyperlipidemic effects of inulin. Protein assay, TG measurement, western blotting, and fluorescence microscopy were utilized to provide the proof of concepts for a satisfactory performance of both inulin and stevioside in acting against hyperlipidaemia.
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