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Asian Scientist Journal (Oct. 4, 2022) – Professor Dennis Lo has been awarded by the Lasker Basis as the only real winner of the 2022 Lasker-DeBakey Scientific Medical Analysis Award for the invention of fetal DNA in maternal blood. Lo’s breakthrough led to the event of accessible non-invasive prenatal testing for Down syndrome and different chromosomal abnormalities.
Presently, Lo holds a number of prestigious positions because the Director of the Li Ka Shing Institute of Well being Sciences, the Li Ka Shing Professor of Drugs and Professor of Chemical Pathology on the Chinese language College of Hong Kong.
In the course of the Eighties, laying the inspiration to grow to be the famend scientist he’s right now, Lo was a 24-year-old medical pupil learning obstetrics at Oxford College. Scientists had been looking for fetal cells in pregnant ladies’s blood for many years in a bid to grasp the genetic make-up of a fetus with out the risking being pregnant—and Lo was keen to hitch the hassle.
In 1996, Lo reasoned that, just like tumors, a fetus could possibly launch genetic materials into plasma, the cell-free portion of blood. He then used polymerase chain response (PCR) expertise to search for the Y chromosome—which, if discovered, might solely have come from the fetus. The strategy was profitable and Lo’s discovery opened the door to non-invasive prenatal diagnostic assessments.
One significantly important utility of Lo’s discovery was the detection of Down syndrome. Initially, it proved troublesome to establish the surplus chromosome 21 with fetal DNA shrouded by maternal DNA. To get round this problem, Lo harnessed digital PCR to amplify a selected gene on chromosome 21 and a special gene on one other chromosome as a reference. This methodology allowed him to match the proportion of chromosome 21 in relation to the reference chromosome. Overrepresentation would point out Down syndrome.
Over time, Lo has refined and tailored his strategies to establish different chromosomal problems. The assessments have since been adopted in over 60 international locations with 10 million assessments carried out in 2018. Lately, Lo has put his skills and strategies in direction of understanding tumor DNA to display for cancers like nasopharyngeal carcinoma.
Established in 1942 by Albert and Mary Lasker, the Lasker Basis goals to have fun the facility of biomedical science and help life-saving biomedical analysis. As America’s most prestigious biomedical analysis awards, the Lasker Awards have acknowledged the contributions of leaders and scientists making waves within the understanding, prognosis, therapy, remedy and prevention of human illness for over 75 years.
Awardees are chosen by a distinguished worldwide jury chaired by Dr Joseph L. Goldstein, recipient of the 1985 Lasker Award for Fundamental Medical Analysis and the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Drugs. Over time, a staggering ninety-five Lasker Laureates have obtained the Nobel Prize together with Dr Sydney Brenner and Dr Tu Youyou—every awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Drugs in 2002 and 2015 respectively.
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Supply: Lasker Basis, Photograph: Chinese language College of Hong Kong
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