Professor Allen Chan is Tony Mok Professor of Medicine, Professor of Chemical Pathology, Co-Director of the Centre for Novostics, and Associate Vice-President (Knowledge Transfer) at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. He received his medical degree from the University of Hong Kong and his PhD from The Chinese University of Hong Kong. An internationally renowned clinician-scientist, Professor Chan has pioneered plasma DNA-based noninvasive diagnostic technologies for prenatal testing, cancer detection, and organ transplantation monitoring.
Professor Chan is a co-inventor of more than 1,800 granted patents worldwide and was named by Nature Biotechnology as one of the world’s top twenty translational researchers based on patent impact. Together with Professor Dennis Lo and Professor Rossa Chiu, he co-invented the noninvasive prenatal test (NIPT) for Down syndrome. This highly accurate blood test has transformed prenatal care by reducing the need for invasive procedures, thereby lowering miscarriage risk and psychological stress. It has been adopted globally and used by more than 100 million pregnant women.
Professor Chan has also made landmark contributions to noninvasive cancer detection. Technologies developed by his team were licensed to GRAIL and advanced into a blood test capable of detecting signals from more than 50 cancer types while indicating the tissue of origin for targeted follow-up investigation. This multi-cancer early detection test was named one of TIME magazine’s Best Inventions of 2022.
He also led the first large-scale clinical trials showing that plasma DNA analysis can be used to screen asymptomatic individuals for early cancer and can substantially improve survival. This study was published in The New England Journal of Medicine and selected as one of the ten most notable articles of 2017.
Professor Chan has also translated research into major real-world impact through entrepreneurship. He co-founded several biotechnology companies. Cirina, a company focused on cancer test development that later merged with GRAIL; the merged entity was subsequently acquired by Illumina for USD 8 billion.
He has received the Annual Achievement Award, the highest honor of the Chinese Society of Clinical Oncology in 2018. His work exemplifies how medical innovation can generate profound scientific, clinical, and societal impact.