The Chemical Biology Laboratory houses laboratories for Synthetic Chemistry, Biological Mass Spectrometry and Molecular Biology. The Laboratory also serves as a hub of Strategically Oriented Research Theme (SORT) on Chemical Biology for Drug Discovery involving academic units of Chemistry, Biological Sciences, Biomedical Sciences and Clinical Medicine in the University. It was established on the foundation of Areas of Excellence (AoE) program of the Institute of Molecular Technology for Drug Discovery & Synthesis, with funding support from: the Research Grants Council, Innovation and Technology Fund, Jockey Club Charity Trust on Chinese Medicines Research, Department of Health projects on Hong Kong Chinese Materia Medica Standards, and State Key Laboratory of Synthetic Chemistry.

X-ray generation from liquid metal or alloy anode is an unprecedented technology, resulting in extremely high power X-ray radiation without the limitations suffered by conventional solid-state X-ray generation techniques, such as the melting point, the vapour pressure, and the thermal conductivity of the solid anode target. Currently, HKU-SKL houses a high-brightness radiation (> 10^11 ph/mm2/s) liquid metal alloy anode (MetalJet D2 from Excillum AB, Sweden) single-crystal X-ray diffractometer (D8 VENTURE from Bruker AXS GmbH) with a precise focusing module (Helios MX GA multilayer optics from INCOATEC GmbH).

The D8 ADVANCE diffractometer is also equipped with a copper sealed tube X-ray source and Sol-X energy dispersive detector, with a vertical DAVINCI theta/ 2 theta goniometer.

The Orbitrap Fusion Tribrid, the Orbitrap Q Exactive Plus and the LTQ Orbitrap Velos mass spectrometers (MS) are high-throughput, high-performance MS. All the Orbitrap MS are connected to a nano-flow UHPLC, which makes them excellent for analysis of proteomics samples. Analysis of proteomics samples is indispensable for identifying drug targets and analysing signalling pathways, and thus necessary for drug discovery research. The ultrafleXtreme MALDI-TOF/TOF MS is extremely suitable for fast confirmation of identities of synthetic complexes; the Maxis II QTOF MS can be used for further confirmation of synthetic complexes by exact mass. Moreover, the Maxis II QTOF MS, when used together with the cryospray source, can be used for analysis of reaction intermediates. Both the Orbitrap Q Exactive Plus MS and the Maxis II QTOF MS are suitable for metabolomics analysis, including metabolite profiling and target metabolite identification.