▎WuXi AppTec Content Team Editor
Editor’s note: Today, the Lasker Prize, known as the vane of the Nobel Prize, announced the latest list of winners, and we are also very pleased to see the eleventh Professor Lu Yuming, winner of the “Outstanding Achievement Award” of the Ming Kant Life Chemistry Research Award, received the Lasker Award for Clinical Medicine. In this article, we revisit an interview with Prof. Lu from WuXi AppTec’s content team many years ago. This article was originally published in December 2017, and the content represents the views at that time. For more information on the 2022 Lasker Awards, see WuXi’s latest report today.
“The sun is like the day, and the moon is like the night”, just as the name implies, Yuming is light. Professor Lu Yuming has been exploring in unknown fields for a long time, and has illuminated the way forward with rigorous scientific research spirit. Based on the discovery of fetal DNA in the peripheral blood of pregnant women, he and his team have made pioneering contributions to non-invasive prenatal fetal genetic testing (NIPT), and applied genetic technology to a wider range of fields such as screening for diseases and fighting cancer.
▲ Professor Lo Yuk Ming
December 9, 2017, the results of the 11th WuXi AppTec Life Chemistry Research Award, which has attracted much attention in the field of life sciences, were announced in Beijing , Professor Lu Yuming from the Chinese University of Hong Kong won the Outstanding Achievement Award. We are also delighted to see that Professor Lu Yuming was included in the list of “Top 20 translational researchers of 2016” by Nature Biotechnology.
Founder of non-invasive prenatal genetic testing
In the mid-1980s, PCR technology for biomedical testing by amplifying DNA sequences was born and showed bright prospects. In 1986, Lu Yuming entered Oxford University to study clinical medicine. He was exposed to this novel technology in his second year of school and quickly got started. PCR technology opened a door to a new world for young Lu Yuming.
Inspiration always comes from thinking people. For a long time, if a pregnant woman wants to know whether the fetus has a chromosomal disorder, the most accurate method is to do amniocentesis, but this technique has a 0.5% chance of causing harm to the fetus.
“Is there a safer method, such as using pregnant women’s blood to test whether the fetus is normal? Can PCR technology be applied to prenatal testing?” This was Lu Yuming’s idea at that time, he thought To find a safer prenatal testing alternative to amniocentesis.
For 8 years, Lu Yuming has been searching for the genetic signal of fetal nucleated cells in the maternal circulation, but he has been unable to move forward. The number of such fetal cells is too small, like looking for a needle in a haystack, and cannot form a reliable and consistent pattern. signal of.
Image source: 123RF
In 1997, Lo Yuk Ming accepted the position of Senior Lecturer in the Department of Chemical Pathology, Chinese University of Hong Kong. At this point, two articles in Nature Medicine caught his eye: The authors detected that cancer cells release their DNA into human plasma and serum.
It occurred to him that perhaps fetal DNA would also be released into the plasma. Finding embryonic DNA free in maternal plasma is a method that no one has thought of before, and how to extract trace amounts of embryonic DNA from maternal plasma has become the focus of Lu Yuming’s research after returning to the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
On weekdays, Lu Yuming, who calls British food “dark cuisine”, likes to make doll noodles by himself, which can be done by heating and cooking for five minutes. However, it was the doll face that inspired him. One day, he suddenly thought: “What will happen if you boil the plasma of pregnant women?” Later, he tried heating the plasma to inactivate proteins that might affect DNA detection, and then centrifuged and aspirated the supernatant to extract The final DNA sample was obtained, and fetal DNA was successfully detected in maternal plasma. This discovery made Lu Yuming’s 8-year research finally bear fruit.
Securing a new life
Soon, Lu Yuming wrote his findings into an article in The Lancet: Fetal DNA is present in maternal plasma and serum. Many scientists were surprised when they first read the article, many of whom didn’t even realize the discovery’s vast application for a while—many simply thought that the technique could be used to determine the sex of a fetus.
In today’s practice, around 10 weeks of gestation, pregnant women undergo a series of prenatal tests. Doctors need to comprehensively judge that the fetus has Down syndrome based on the pregnant woman’s age, ultrasound results, and even the detection of specific hormones and proteins in the blood.possibility of sign. If the test results show a high risk, then plasma DNA testing may be continued to obtain more conclusive results – an application of the technology Lu Yuming discovered and developed.
Image source: 123RF
In the fall of 2011, Lu Yuming’s “non-invasive prenatal fetal genetic testing (NIPT)” technology officially began clinical application. At present, about 40% of pregnant women in Hong Kong receive NIPT every year, and about 4 million pregnant women in mainland China receive this test every year.
Years of persistence have brought Lu Yuming into his era. In September 2016, he won two consecutive scientific awards – “Future Science Award – Life Science Award” and “Thomson Reuters Citation Laureate Award” for his “non-invasive prenatal diagnosis” technology pioneered in blood DNA research.
His research has captured world attention and is widely recognized by the scientific community. The 14 related scientific papers published since 1997 have been cited more than 6,000 times.
The ferry is covered with frost like snow, the first marks on my blue shoes
Lu Yuming was not satisfied with the achievements of NIPT technology, they began to think, if this technology was used to screen cancer in healthy people, what would the result be? As a result, Lu Yuming led the research team to apply related technologies to organ transplant rejection testing and cancer diagnosis. “We hope to eventually develop a blood test that can diagnose multiple cancers like non-invasive prenatal diagnosis,” said Lu Yuming.
Now, the technology researched by Lu Yuming’s team has spread. On the basis of similar theory, it continues to develop projects such as liquid biopsy of cancer and monitoring of complications after liver transplantation, namely By detecting the content of DNA released from cancer cells in the patient’s plasma to determine whether there is cancer; or by detecting the concentration of donor DNA in the plasma of patients after liver transplantation to determine whether rejection occurs, so that these serious diseases can be treated before obvious symptoms appear. It was detected early and measures were taken in a timely manner.
Lu Yuming’s doctoral supervisor, Professor Kenneth Fleming of Oxford University, was full of praise when he recalled his former student. He sees Lu Yuming as an energetic person and a “problem solver” who always thinks through problems and finds solutions.
His student Dr. Huijun Zhao described Lu Yuming’s passion for science in this way: If he thought of a problem, no matter how big or small, he would not let it go, and even called us to discuss it at any time. Very stubborn, we must find out why this problem occurs, and we must find a solution.
“You can’t really see the mountains and rivers outside the fog. You can only recognize Qiancun by chickens and dogs. The ferry boat is covered with frost like snow, and the first trace of my blue shoes is printed.” On the wall of his home, Lu Yuming framed the A poem written by the former president of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Professor Jin Yaoji, by Yang Wanli, a poet of the Song Dynasty, “Dawns over Dagaodu on the 5th day of the first lunar month of Gengzi”.
The scene depicted in the poem is that the poet is on a ferry boat to find a small village, but his vision is shrouded in fog, and he can only identify the village ahead by the sound of roosters and dogs. When they finally reached their destination, the ferry was covered with thick frost, and the first footprints were set on the snow-white board.
“Doing research is like traveling, to a place that no one has ever set foot in. This is actually an advantage of being a scientist because we get the chance to see some other people It’s exciting to see something that has never been seen before. So we all want to be able to leave the first footprint in our field of science and write a new page in the history of science.” Lu Yuming explained.
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