Attila T. Lorincz BsC, PhD

Prof. Attila Lorincz received a doctorate in genetics from Trinity College, University of Dublin, Ireland. While a research fellow at the University of California, Santa Barbara he was the first to report that yeast cdc28 is a protein kinase and the prototype of the human cell cycle cdk genes (Lorincz and Reed, Nature 1984). His human papillomavirus studies began in collaboration with Nobel Laureate Harald zurHausen and this work produced clones of many novel carcinogenic HPV types. In 1990 Dr Lorincz co-founded Digene Corp. (now QIAGEN Inc.) as Chief Scientific Officer. His research led to the Hybrid Capture (HC) series of tests, HC2 was the first HPV test to be FDA-approved for cervical pre-cancer screening and is widely regarded as the international reference standard. His subsequent research work includes the development of a simple robust HPV test for resource-limited regions and a randomized clinical trial to validate self-sampling as an efficient screening approach to prevent cervical cancer.

Dr. Lorincz is Director of the Molecular Epidemiology Laboratory at the Wolfson Institute of Preventive Medicine where his research interests include the epigenomics of prostate, breast and cervical cancers. Recently his team have developed a set of new diagnostic and prognostic cancer biomarkers based on DNA methylation assays. He is leading a new discovery initiative in next generation deep sequencing and in elucidating the comparative epigenomic systems of human cancers. Dr Lorincz has written more than 230 peer-reviewed papers and is an inventor on 45 patents related to diagnostic and prognostic testing. He was the recipient of several prestigious prizes including the 1994 American Venereal Disease Association Achievement Award and THE TIMES Award 2012 for UK research project of the year.