Deng Hongkui
The Power List 2020 – Advanced Medicine
Changjiang Professor, the Boya Chair Professor, and Director of the Institute of Stem Cell Research at Peking University
In 1989, Deng Hongkui left China for the US, working on HIV at New York University before switching to stem cells – eventually becoming research director of the stem cell company ViaCell in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He then went back to China after being awarded the prestigious Changjiang Professorship. In 2017, he and Chen Hu engineered resistance to HIV in mice using CRISPR gene editing, and for the first time used the technique on an AIDS patient – demonstrating the safety of CRISPR for humans.
