Dr. Carmen Chak-lui WONG

Award Citation 

Dr. Carmen Chak-Lui Wong, assistant dean of LKS Faculty of Medicine, is currently an Associate Professor and Principal Investigator in the Department of Pathology and the State Key Laboratory of Liver Research at HKU. She obtained her PhD degree in HKU and completed her post-doctoral training at Johns Hopkins University. She is the recipient of the NSFC Distinguished Young Scholars Fund, NSFC Excellent Young Scientist Fund (Hong Kong and Macau), Croucher Innovation Award, HKU Outstanding Young Researcher Award (OYRA), HKU Outstanding Research Student Supervisory Award (ORSSA), Hong Kong Young Scientist Award, the Li Ka Shing Prize. Her research team is devoted to unraveling the complex mechanisms that drive metabolic reprogramming and immune evasion in liver cancer. Her team employs precision mouse models to gain a deeper understanding of personalized medicine for liver cancer, revealing the deterministic effects of driver gene mutations on the immune characteristic and response for immunotherapies. The study has paved the way for precision medicine. Her work was published in Gastroenterology, Gut, Journal of Hepatology, Hepatology, Nature Communications, Journal of Clinical Investigation, PNAS, Science Advance. She is the ESI top 1% most cited scholar in 2023. She is an elected member of the Hong Kong Young Academy of Science. She currently serves as a co-editor-in-chief of Hepatology Communications (AASLD). She is also the council member of the governing board of the International Liver Cancer Association (ILCA). The proposed study aims to shed light on intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma, a type of liver cancer that is often overlooked but has a higher mortality rate than hepatocellular carcinoma. Through this research, we hope to discover innovative treatment options for intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma, which could potentially enhance the disease's prognosis and increase patient survival rates.