Professor Lyu Aiping elected Foreign Member of Academia Europaea

Professor Lyu Aiping, Dr Kennedy Y.H. Wong Endowed Professor in Chinese Medicine and Dean of the School of Chinese Medicine at Hong Kong Baptist University (HKBU), has been elected as a Foreign Member of the Academia Europaea in 2022 in recognition of his sustained academic excellence in systems medicine.

Founded in 1988, the Academia Europaea is the pan-European Academy of Sciences, Humanities and Letters. It is dedicated to the advancement and propagation of excellence in scholarship in the humanities; law; the economic, social, and political sciences; mathematics; medicine, and all branches of the natural and technological sciences. The Academy hosts more than 4,500 members who are leading scientists and scholars, including 72 Nobel Prize laureates.

Professor Lyu’s research interests focus mainly on translational research in Chinese medicine, including the pharmacological and clinical evaluation of rheumatoid arthritis with re-classification and interventions, and the development of new drugs based on Chinese medicines. Notably in the field of bone and joint diseases, Professor Lyu has outstanding achievements in precision medicine research focusing on disease reclassification and combination therapy based on the concepts of traditional Chinese medicine and modern science and technology.

Professor Lyu is a world-leading scientist in aptamer-based translational medicine and drug discovery. He is the director of the first aptamer research and development platform in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area. He has developed the world’s first-ever osteoblast-targeting nucleic acid aptamer. His discovery of the therapeutic aptamer targeting Sclerostin loop-3 was granted Orphan Drug Designation by the US Food and Drug Administration for evaluating the therapeutic potential of promoting bone formation in osteogenesis imperfecta. He has also developed the first aptamer conjugate with the chemotherapy drug Paclitaxel, and it is currently being developed into an anti-cancer therapeutic.

Professor Lyu has published more than 500 academic papers, and he has about 19,000 citations. His research outputs have obtained more than 60 international and national invention patents, and he is the author of more than 30 books.

Professor Lyu is also currently serving as the director of several interdisciplinary research institutions at HKBU, including the Shum Yiu Foon Shum Bik Chuen Memorial Centre for Cancer and Inflammation Research, the Institute of Integrated Bioinformatics and Translational Science, and the Hong Kong Baptist University Joint Centre for Pain Research. He is also a chair professor in the China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences and a recipient of funding from the National Natural Science Foundation of China’s National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars in 2007.