Tainan, Taiwan, April 12, 2016

The 3rd iMANI workshop hosted by NCKU International Institute for Macromolecular Analysis and Nanomedicine Innovations (iMANI) kicks off April 12 at National Cheng Kung University (NCKU), Tainan, Taiwan.

In addition to the lecture series, the event includes hands-on-workshop for practicing the Cryo-EM based structure biology by world-renowned experts from America, Switzerland, the UK, and Taiwan.

At the opening ceremony, President Huey-Jen Jenny Su extended her warm welcome to the guests and said, “iMANI has very short history which is founded under the leadership or Pref. Shieh in 2013 but over the very short two years it has identified itself as a very important infrastructure not only within this university but for the linkage between the university and the industry.”

She also said, “we have witnessed many groundbreaking scientific breakthrough from their scientific publication published in many high ranked international journals such as PNAS, EMBO, JVI, Scientific report and so forth.”

“I think more importantly the institute has shown its capacity to be able to deliver quality service to the industry not only the established ones, the big pharmaceutical companies in the country but also has offered their very critical support to the new startup companies in Taiwan,” President Su added.

In his remarks, NCKU College of Medicine Dean Jang-Yang Chang said, “In the past years, the iMANI has made big contributions not only in developing cutting edge instrumentation and technology to deliver outstanding scientific discovery for the center, but also helped NCKU faculty, especially college of medicine, to augment their research development to a next level.”

“Their achievements are not limited to NCKU or to Taiwan,” said Dean Chang adding that through long-term international collaboration with leading scientists and institutes such as US National Center for Macromolecular Imaging, Karolinksa Institute of Sweden, Kings College of UK, Australia Center for Microscopy and Microanalysis and many more, iMANI is anticipated to become a global Cryo-EM core facility.

Prof. Shu-Fen Chuang from the Institute of Oral Medicine said, “ The i-MANI has put its focus on the pathogens which threaten Taiwan, such as Entervirus type 71, dengue virus, Hepatitis virus, and so on and has contributed precious results to reveal their three-dimensional structure.”

The i-MANI also cooperate tightly with the Center of Infectious Disease and Signaling Research in NCKU and could contribute a role in the rapid identification of pathogen, epitope mapping, the development of effective vaccination and the macromolecular compound assisted by structure based molecular design.

Prof. Dar-Bin Shieh, the founding Chair of iMANI, said, “This year we are celebrating the achievement and embracing new challenges to work the next scientific breakthrough of the center.”

“And today we again made a new achievement. I’m delighted to announce the launch of our new Cryo-section and tomography capability,” he added.

With the great support from Academician Wah Chiu and university, i-MANI has ideally poised to build upon the excellence in high-resolution structural biology by cryo-EM for the analysis of higher-order structures, according to Prof. Shang-Rung Wu, the organizer of the 3rd iMANI Symposium and Hands-on Workshop.

She noted, Today’s workshop will allow an invaluable opportunity to collectively promote such technique. Envisioning the needs for new approaches in life science discovery, new drug development, nanomedicine innovations, and infectious disease research, i-MANI is anticipated to play a critical role from the bottom.”
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