Dana Tsui PhD

Dana did her Ph.D. with Prof Dennis Lo in Hong Kong, during when she developed non-invasive approaches to diagnose genetic diseases of the fetus using cell-free DNA that sheds from the fetus into the blood circulation of pregnant women.

She then moved to the UK in 2010 and joined Dr. Nitzan Rosenfeld in Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute, University of Cambridge, to develop a non-invasive cancer diagnostics tool using a similar strategy: using cell-free DNA that shed from the tumors into the blood circulation of cancer patients. Dana and Dr. Rosenfeld’s team have established a robust methodology for accurate measurement of circulating tumor DNA from plasma samples and demonstrated its potential to monitor the evolving genetic information of cancer in a safe and non-invasive way.

Since 2016, Dana joined the Faculty of Department of Pathology at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, worked with teams at the Center for Molecular Oncology to develop MSK-ACCESS, a clinical-grade cell-free DNA profiling test that received full approval by New York State Department of Health in 2019 for clinical use at the Diagnostic Molecular Pathology CLIA laboratory at MSKCC.

Dana currently serves as a Technical Director at the Molecular Diagnostic Service at MSKCC to integrate plasma DNA profiling into clinical practice, continue to develop new diagnostic assay and lead translational research projects to study the clinical utility of liquid biopsy in adult and pediatric cancers. The goal is to guide more effective cancer management and tailor personalized medicine.