Coffee Pod #81 Dr Rossa Chiu discusses taking on the cancer epidemic with a team of young guns in Hong Kong

Coffee Pods with Holly Ransom

Not only has Dr Rossa Chiu won numerous international awards including the Advance Asia Impact Award 2020, she also has over 485 patents to her name. A specialist in molecular signatures as a chemical pathologist, Rossa moved to Hong Kong immediately after graduating from the University of Queensland to work in her dream job - researching non-invasive prenatal testing procedures, detecting any abnormalities in unborn babies.

Today, Dr Rossa Chiu is a professor in the department of chemical pathology and Associate Dean for Development at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Rossa is determined to detect early cancer, saying "Very often people only learn about their cancer when they start to become unwell". Rossa and her team have translated their learnings from prenatal detection to bring forward the diagnostic timeline for cancer detection in order to save lives via a simple blood test. At any one time, among every one thousand individuals, there are two persons with known cancer, and only fifty percent of cancer patients survive beyond ten years.

How does Australia's leading cancer researcher keep an eye on IP opportunities while changing diagnostic practices? And why does she consider raising her kids to be the most difficult research project yet?

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