HK biomedical expert wins 'Oscars of Science'

HONG KONG - Leading Hong Kong biomedical expert Dennis Lo Yuk-ming received a 2021 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences on Thursday for his contributions to non-invasive prenatal diagnoses.

Lo, a professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong's Faculty of Medicine, discovered that fetal DNA is present in maternal blood and can be used in prenatal testing for Down syndrome and other genetic diseases.

He published the discovery in 1997 and then led his team to make non-invasive DNA-based prenatal testing a clinical reality.

The testing, regarded as a significant breakthrough in global scientific community, is now performed over 7 million times annually with pregnant women in over 90 countries, the university said.

Lo has also been called "the father of non-invasive prenatal testing."

After the prize announcement, Lo said it is most rewarding to see that his scientific work has been widely used around the world and benefiting many families.

He encouraged more medical professionals from the younger generation to pursue innovation and technology "to make a difference".

Lo's research team succeeded in deciphering a fetal genome through the analysis of traces of fragmented DNA floating in the blood of a pregnant woman, which lays the foundation for developing non-invasive prenatal diagnostic tests for genetic diseases.

In recent years, he and his team also successfully developed a non-invasive test for cancer detection based on similar scientific principles.

The Breakthrough Prizes, known as the "Oscars of Science," were created and funded by some world-leading tech enterprises in 2012 to honor research in fundamental physics, life sciences and mathematics.

The prizes were co-founded by Google's Sergey Brin and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Brin, Zuckerberg, Tencent CEO Pony Ma Huateng and Alibaba co-founder Jack Ma are among the prizes' sponsors.

The other recipients of 2021 Breakthrough Prizes in Life Sciences were David Baker, Catherine Dulac and Richard J. Youle.

With US$3 million in prize money for each laureate, the prize is one of the most generous science awards in the world.