A pioneer in the field of genetic testing, molecular biologist Dennis Lo is one of Hong Kong’s most renowned scientific figures. The Li Ka Shing Professor of Medicine at The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) and Associate Dean of its Faculty of Medicine, he has been responsible for breakthroughs that have revolutionised testing for a range of common diseases.

After training at Cambridge and Oxford universities and working in the UK, Lo returned to Hong Kong in 1997. His first big breakthrough came when he discovered the presence of foetus’s DNA in their mothers’ blood plasma, allowing for non-invasive prenatal diagnostic tests of mothers’ blood for multiple genetic diseases. He has also been responsible for new approaches to cancer liquid biopsy, providing a means to detect multiple types of cancer. He was also a key figure in the fight against Sars, and was among the first to sequence the virus’s genome.

His latest venture is Insighta, a US$200 million company formed with Danny Yeung of Prenetics that will offer a new form of genetic testing for cancer. The first iteration, expected to be commercially available in Hong Kong and mainland China in 2025, will be able to detect liver and lung cancer using only a blood sample, at a price of just US$200.

He has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the Breakthrough Prize, the Royal Medal, the Future Science Prize—Life Science Prize, and the Lasker-DeBakey award, the latter often seen as a precursor to a Nobel prize.