From Oct 15 to 17, two student teams from Anhui Medical University's School of Life Sciences competed in the College Undergraduate Life Sciences Challenge Finals held at Jinan University's Panyu Campus.

Emerging from the East China regional rounds, both teams earned top honors: one Gold Award and one Excellence Award. The gold-winning project was also awarded the single-category "Best Mechanism Explanation Award".

Anhui Medical University's student teams win the Gold Award and an Excellence Award in the College Undergraduate Life Sciences Challenge Finals. 

Organized by the Alliance of Open Life Science, this flagship competition in "AI + Life Sciences" attracted nearly 1,200 teams from over 200 universities nationwide. Out of only 11 Gold Awards awarded, the university's winning team comprised six 2024-class biotechnology students. Their project was recognized as a "Seed Project" for the National University Biomedical Regional Technology Transfer and Transformation Center (Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area) and invited to hold a public roadshow at the Global School Headmaster Forum in Hong Kong.

The gold-winning project, "AI-Driven Target Discovery and Carnosine Mechanism Analysis in Anti-Hepatocellular Carcinoma Research", developed an innovative AI drug screening system focusing on ASPA as a potential therapeutic target. Using an integrated wet-lab and dry-lab workflow, the team developed three custom AI models — RF-v1.0, MolGPT-v1.0, and XGB-v1.0 — to generate and lock in carnosine as an effective small-molecule candidate for liver cancer therapy. The competition committee praised the system for its strong real-world application potential.

Under the dedicated mentorship of faculty members Du Youwen and Pan Linxin, the team underwent rigorous training to optimize their computational models, mechanistic analysis, and presentation logic.

Moving forward, the School of Life Sciences remains committed to advancing innovation-driven education and encouraging students to align their research with critical national needs.