Dennis Lo

Background

Lo was born in Hong Kong. His father was a medical doctor and his mother taught music

Education

In 1983, at the age of 20, he attended Cambridge University and completed a pre-clinical degree before attending Oxford for clinical training. He later finished his Doctor of Philosophy at Oxford.

Career

He is the director of the Li Ka Shing Institute of Health Sciences. Lo is a fellow of the Royal Society. Lo has stated that he does not practice a religion but in his heart of hearts would have "to invoke something religious to explain everything right to the beginning."

After learning about a new method to detect small amounts of deoxyribonucleic acid called polymerase chain reaction from another researcher, Lo read a research paper describing the detection of tumor deoxyribonucleic acid in blood plasma.

Lo wondered if it would be possible to detect fetal deoxyribonucleic acid in blood from a pregnant mother.

In 1989, he published results that suggested fetal deoxyribonucleic acid did exist but only in low quantities. However, in 1997, Lo was successful in detecting fetal deoxyribonucleic acid in the plasma of a pregnant mother by using the male chromosome as a marker.

He called the discovery like "finding your car"s engine somewhere other than under the bonnet." This discovery has enabled a safer way for prenatal diagnosis of abnormalities in fetal development. In 2011, he developed a sequencing-based technology to determine the gender of the fetus earlier than an ultrasound.

Lo was able to adapt this technology to use Ribonucleic acid, instead of deoxyribonucleic acid, to detect down-syndrome in unborn fetuses where previous methods could cause a miscarriage.

Achievements

• State Natural Science Award from the State Council of China, 2005 International Federation of Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine, 2006 Abbott Award for Outstanding Contribution to Molecular Dianosticas United States National Academy of Clinical Biochemistry Distinguished Scientist Award, 2006 Sigi Zeiring Award from the American Association of Clinical Chemistry, 2009 Fellow of the Royal Society, 2011 Foreign Associate of the United States National Academy of Sciences, 2013 king Faisal award 2014.

Membership

Royal Society; National Academy of Sciences.