Figuring out "new ways of hacking biology" - that's how Assistant Professor Shao Huilin describes her work.
An NUS Presidential Young Professor at the Department of Biomedical Engineering at CDE, as well as NUS Institute for Health Innovation & Technology (iHealthtech), Asst Prof Shao engineers nanoscale devices to detect early-warning signals of disease - known as biomarkers - in blood samples.
This helps doctors diagnose and monitor diseases more quickly so that treatment can be started earlier.
Biomarkers of disease are like clues at a crime scene, says Asst Prof Shao. "The secrets to these diseases are already present in the blood. The trick is how to reveal them."
This approach enabled her lab to formulate a game-changing blood test that takes less than an hour to determine how cancer is responding to treatments, as well as innovative tests to detect early stages of Alzheimer's disease and a faster alternative to PCR tests to detect COVID-19.
Read more about Asst Prof Shao Huilin and her work in this profile at NUS News: https://news.nus.edu.sg/the-engineer-who-speaks-the-language-of-medical-doctors/
