Say Li Kong's Biography

Say Li Kong, Research Associate, Genome Institute of Singapore

Dr Say Li, Kong is a cancer geneticist. Her research focuses on the molecular characterization of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) and utilizing cell-free plasma DNA (cfDNA) as liquid biopsy tools for individualized cancer care. She applied single cell transcriptomic and genomic profiling approaches to track CTCs in lung, breast and colorectal cancers patients. She is keen on developing new methodologies for single cell study, detection of cfDNA using metal nanoparticles nucleic acid biosensors and inventing novel method for detection of CTCs using specific markers. Her unique working experiences in both the clinical and research laboratories has motivated her to pursue for translational research with the ultimate goal to bridge the gap between the bench and bed-side.

She received her PhD from National University of Singapore under the supervision of Prof Edison Liu. She went on to pursue her post-doctoral training under the mentorship of Axel Hillmer and Bing Lim. She is the winner of several awards and grants such as the prestigious Ray Wu Prize for Excellent for Life Sciences, 2012 and Career Development Award, 2014 from JCO, A*STAR. She is actively engaging collaborations with different institutions (NUS; IBN and IMRE, A*STAR), clinicians (National Cancer Centre and Singapore General Hospital) and industry partners (Clearbridge Accelerator and Fludigim).