Dennis Lo, M.D., Ph.D.

Professor Dennis Lo is the Director of the Li Ka Shing Institute of Health Sciences and the Chairman of the Department of Chemical Pathology at The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK). Dennis received his Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Cambridge, UK, and his Doctor of Medicine and Doctor of Philosophy degrees from the University of Oxford, UK. He returned to Hong Kong in 1997. In the same year, he reported, for the first time, the presence of cell-free fetal DNA in maternal plasma and has since pioneered its use for noninvasive prenatal testing. He has also seen the similarities between circulating DNA analysis for prenatal testing and cancer detection and has pushed forward the liquid biopsies of cancer. He has made particular contribution in the non-invasive detection of nasopharyngeal carcinoma. This work has demonstrated many of the fundamental characteristics and applications of circulating tumor DNA in plasma. In recognition of his work, Dennis received the Future Science Prize in Life Science in 2016, and has been elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society in the UK and as a Foreign Associate of the US National Academy of Sciences.