Khoo Ui Soon

  • Senior Medical Research Fellowship in 2015 at University of Hong Kong

Professor Khoo Ui-Soon is a Clinical Professor in the Department of Pathology, The University of Hong Kong, Deputy Director of the University Pathology Laboratory (Molecular Pathology) and Honorary Consultant Pathologist at Queen Mary Hospital.

She obtained her medical degree from the University College Galway, Ireland before joining The University of Hong Kong where she did her postgraduate pathology specialist training and her higher doctorate in research. Her research work currently focuses on the molecular genetics of breast cancer. She pioneered the study of breast cancer susceptibility genes, BRCA1 and BRCA2 in Chinese breast and ovarian cancer patients. Her studies include the functional variants of the BRCA and Estrogen Receptor gene, genome-wide association studies for breast cancer in Chinese as part of the Asian Breast Consortium, identification of alternatively spliced variants in Chinese breast cancer, and FOXO transcription factors in hormone refractory breast cancer and has published widely in high impact journals.. Having recently identified a novel splice variant to the nuclear receptor co-repressor 2 (NCOR2) gene associated with tamoxifen resistance, work is on-going funded by an Innovation Technology Fund grant, to raise a monoclonal antibody targeting the epitope unique to this BQ variant, which will be used for functional and in vivo studies to confirm its role in the development of tamoxifen resistance.

She previously researched on host genetic-factors to SARS Co-V infection with publications in Nature Genetics, J. Exp Med, J Infectious Diseases etc, particularly that of  L-SIGN, a SARS-CoV binding receptor and and its tandem repeat polymorphisms and of Myxovirus resistance-A (MxA), an antiviral protein induced by interferon (IFN)-α/β, which can inhibit viral replication.

Currently

Her research is currently focused on investigating the underlying molecular mechanisms contributing towards drug resistance in breast cancer. These studies include the Forkhead transcription factors and alternative splicing.