Dr. Dennis Lo is a world-renowned molecular biologist and chemical pathologist who has fundamentally transformed prenatal diagnostics through revolutionary scientific discoveries. He currently serves as the ninth Vice-Chancellor and President of The Chinese University of Hong Kong, a position he assumed in January 2025, having previously held the Li Ka Shing Professorship of Medicine and Professorship of Chemical Pathology at the same institution. Born in Hong Kong to a psychiatrist father and music teacher mother, Lo developed an early fascination with science through illustrated biology books that sparked his desire to become directly involved in scientific discoveries. He completed his undergraduate education at the University of Cambridge before pursuing his medical and doctoral degrees at the University of Oxford, where he began his pioneering research career focused on molecular biological techniques.
Lo's groundbreaking 1997 discovery of cell-free fetal DNA in maternal plasma revolutionized prenatal medicine by making non-invasive genetic testing of fetuses possible for the first time, eliminating the need for risky invasive procedures. His systematic research over more than two decades led to the development of non-invasive prenatal testing for chromosomal abnormalities, particularly trisomy 21 responsible for Down syndrome, which has been adopted in over 100 countries worldwide and used by more than 100 million pregnant women. Beyond prenatal diagnostics, Lo has pioneered the application of similar liquid biopsy techniques for early cancer detection, developing genome-wide genetic and epigenetic approaches that facilitate the early detection of multiple cancer types. His work has created a paradigm shift in medical diagnostics, enabling comprehensive analysis of fetal genetic material through simple maternal blood samples without endangering the pregnancy.
As a transformative leader in translational medicine, Lo has received numerous prestigious accolades including the 2022 Lasker~DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award, the 2014 King Faisal International Prize in Medicine, and election as a Foreign Associate of the US National Academy of Sciences. He directs the Li Ka Shing Institute of Health Sciences at CUHK, where he continues to advance the frontiers of liquid biopsy technology with recent work focusing on sequencing the complete fetal genome, methylome, and transcriptome from maternal blood. His contributions have earned him recognition as the "father of non-invasive prenatal testing" and established him as one of the most influential medical researchers of his generation. Lo's ongoing research promises to further revolutionize early disease detection and personalized medicine through innovative applications of circulating DNA analysis across multiple clinical domains.
