Billy Ng Wai-Lung 吳濰龍

  • Fellowship in 2014 at University of Oxford

Ng Lab's homepage: https://www.ngwailung.com/

Professor Billy Wai-Lung Ng obtained his B.Sc. degree in Chemistry (1st Class Hons.) and Ph.D. in Chemistry from the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK). During his graduate study, he was a Fulbright Scholar at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), under the generous funding supports from the Lee Hysan Foundation and the Fulbright Program. From 2014 – 2016, he joined the University of Oxford as a Croucher Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow. He was then recruited to Harvard Medical School / Dana-Farber Cancer Institute as a research fellow from 2016 – 2019. He was honored as a Young Global Leader (2022) by the World Economic Forum.

Professor Ng is an expert in creating chemical tools to investigate and treat human diseases. His Ph.D. research centers on the syntheses of a new class of anti-diabetic agents, namely sodium-dependent glucose co-transporter 2 (SGLT2) inhibitors. His research works [1][2][3] have already led to the identification of several stable, potent, and selective SGLT2 inhibitors that may provide an alternative solution for treating diabetes.

At Oxford, he developed several chemical protein modification reactions, such as “post-translational mutagenesis” for studying post-translational modifications of proteins [4], selective radical reactions for incorporating fluorine tags into proteins [5,6], and a site-selective strategy for creating deuterated proteins [7]. At Harvard, he focused on the identification of new drug targets and therapeutic molecules for the treatment of lung cancer [8][9].

Currently

Professor Ng joined CUHK Medicine as an assistant professor in 2019, with a research focus on chemical biology, drug discovery, and medicinal chemistry. The Ng lab aims at developing novel small-molecule inhibitors for the treatment of various diseases, including cancers, neurodegenerative and infectious diseases [10][11][12][13][14]. For more details, please refer to Ng Lab's homepage: https://www.ngwailung.com/

[1] Angew. Chem. Int. Ed., 2013, 52, 8401.

[2] Angew. Chem. Int. Ed., 2016, 55, 13818.

[3] Sci. Rep., 2017, 7, 5581.

[4] Science, 2016, 354, 597.

[5] J. Am. Chem. Soc., 2018, 140, 1568.

[6] ACS Cent. Sci., 2021, 7, 145.

[7] Nat. Chem. Bio., 2018, 14, 955.

[8] Cancer Discov., 2020, 10, 270.

[9] Cancer Res, 2020, 80, 3556. [Cover art]

[10] Mol. Cell, 2020, 79, 710.

[11] ACS Cent. Sci., 20217, 792.

[12] Trends Biochem. Sci., 2021, 46, 351. [Cover art]

[13] Trends Microbiol., 2022, 30, 1217. [Cover art]

[14] Org. Lett., 2023, ASAP.