In thisHong Kong name, thesurname isLo. In accordance with Hong Kong custom, the Western-style name is Dennis Lo and the Chinese-style name is Lo Yuk-ming.
After obtaining his medical degree, Lo continued to study at Oxford, first obtaining aDPhil (during which he was atHertford College) in 1994, and then aDoctor of Medicine (DM) degree in 2001.[11] He was also a junior research fellow in natural sciences at Hertford College between 1990 and 1993, and the Wellcome Career Development Fellow in Clinical Medicine from 1993 to 1994.[3]
Lo began his research career studyingpolymerase chain reaction (PCR), amolecular biological technique for rapidly generating millions of copies of a desiredDNA sequence. He first heard about the technique at a lecture byJohn Bell, nowRegius Professor of Medicine, at Oxford, and asked to learn the technique from Bell.[7][8][13] Working with Kenneth Anthony Fleming, his future PhD advisor, Lo found the relatively new technique generated a lot offalse positives due to contamination.[14]
Lo then wondered iffetal DNA was detectable in mother'sblood. Using PCR, he detected theY chromosome in a mother bearing a baby boy.[15] During his PhD, Lo wanted to develop his research intoprenatal diagnostic test, using fetal DNA from fetalcells in the mother's blood. This, however, was stymied by a number of factors, including low concentration of fetal cells, high false positive rate and the persistence of fetal cells after giving birth.[7][8]
In 1997, again using the Y chromosome as a marker in mothers bearing baby boys, Lo reported the presence of cell-free fetal DNA in most of the test subjects.[18] This was after he read thatcirculating tumor DNA were detectable in cancer patients'blood plasma and switched strategy to search forcell-free fetal DNA in mother's blood.[7]
Lo, who by the time was married, returned toHong Kong the same year with his wife, as the city was preparing itshanding back toChina. He became a senior lecturer in the Department ofChemical Pathology at theChinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) in January 1997.[8] In an interview years later, he called this discovery was like "finding your car's engine somewhere other than under the bonnet."[19]
One of the first disorders for which Lo developednon-invasive prenatal testing using cell-free fetal DNA wasRh disease, a type ofanaemia that occurs when the foetus isRh-positive but the mother is Rh-negative.[20] Separately, Lo also detected fetalRNA in mother's blood, which indicated whatgenes wereexpressed.[21] He then sought novel methods to isolate fetal DNA from mother's blood, which in 2002 came in the form of difference inDNA methylation between the mother and foetus.[22]
Lo's research into non-invasive prenatal testing was interrupted in 2003 by theSARS outbreak. An infected patient was treated at thePrince of Wales Hospital, the teaching hospital forCUHK Faculty of Medicine, turning the hospital into one of the epicenters in Hong Kong.[23][24] His group was one of the first to sequence theSARS virus[25] and to discover the existence of multipleviralstrains.[26]
Lo returned to studying detection of cell-free fetal DNA after the SARS outbreak. In 2008, he reported the use ofnext-generation sequencing (NGS), which has a much higherthroughput than traditional PCR and was a relatively new technology at the time.[27] When used to detectDown syndrome, which is caused by an extrachromosome 21, this method was later shown to have a 100%sensitivity and a nearly 98%specificity,[28] prompting its introduction into clinics in 2011.[7]
The next year, while watching aHarry Potter movie in3D, the flying "H" reminded him of 2homologous chromosomes and gave him an idea on how to sequence the fetalgenome: to separately sequence the 2 halves of DNA that the foetus inherited from the father and the mother.[13] For the father's half, they searched for DNA sequences present only in the father but not the mother; for the mother's half, they counted the DNA sequences from the mother to deduce the sequences inherited by the foetus, which would be found in excess in the mother's blood plasma. This discovery created a non-invasive method to detect fetalmutations.[29] In 2013, his group showed that the fetalepigenome could also be determined from mother's blood plasma.[30]
Apart from non-invasive prenatal testing, Lo started investigating cancerdiagnosis, profiling andprognosis fromcirculating tumor DNA using NGS in 2012, when he reported the genetic profiling of cancer in patients' blood plasma.[31]
Lo is the co-founder of 2 biotechnology companies, both established in 2014. Using funding from theventure capital firm Decheng Capital, he co-founded Cirina with his longtime CUHK collaborators Rossa Chiu and Allen Chan.[33] The company focuses on cancer detection with circulating tumor DNA.[34] The company was acquired byGRAIL in 2017,[35] which, in turn, was acquired byIllumina in 2021.[36] The 3 of them also co-founded Xcelom, which commercialised their research in non-invasive prenatal testing.[33][37][38]
On 22 September 2024, Lo was nominated as a candidate to succeedRocky Tuan as CUHK president and vice-chancellor. He was the sole candidate,[44] and his nomination was approved unanimously on 27 September 2024.[45] He assumed office on 8 January 2025.[46]
Lo is married to Alice Siu Ling Wong. They met each other while Lo was pursuing hisDPhil at theUniversity of Oxford, where Wong was completing her DPhil insemiconductorphysics.[4] They got married in 1994.[61]
^abcdAbboud, Alexis (4 November 2014)."Dennis Lo (1963- )". Embryo Project Encyclopedia. Archived fromthe original on 8 September 2021. Retrieved8 September 2021.
^ab"Dennis Lo". CUHK Faculty of Medicine.Archived from the original on 10 September 2021. Retrieved10 September 2021.
^Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) Expert Committee (2 October 2003). "The SARS Epidemic: The Prince of Wales Hospital Outbreak".SARS in Hong Kong: from Experience to Action(PDF). Archived fromthe original(PDF) on 13 April 2021. Retrieved10 October 2021.
^"好奇心泛起了漣漪——專訪盧煜明".U-Beat Magazine (in Chinese). Chinese University of Hong Kong. 19 December 2016. Archived fromthe original on 11 September 2021. Retrieved11 September 2021.
