Professor Qizhou Lian was a Cardiology practitioner after he received doctoral degree of Medicine from Harbin Medical University in 1999. In 2001 he undertook postdoctoral training  in the field of stem cell and regenerative medicine in the National University of Singapore, Genome Institute of Singapore and Utrecht University Medical Centre. In 2011 he took up Assistant Professor appointment at  the Department of Medicine in the University of Hong Kong (HKU) and in 2019 Reader appointment in the University of Aberdeen, United Kingdom. In 2020 he returned to HKU and  established the first cGMP manufacturing centre for cellular therapeutics. In 2023 he joined CAS-SIAT. Prof Lian’s lab is focused on stem cell directed differentiation and has established a series of therapeutically useful cell types from pluripotent stem cells including mesenchymal stromal cells (MSC) ; Notochord and nucleus pulposus cells (NPC); Retinal cells; Lung cells; Immune cells and expandable Cardiomyocytes, etc. In 2014, his team  pioneered the Asia’s first hematopoietic stem cell gene therapy and successfully saved patients suffered from metachromatic leukodystrophy (MLD), a rare hereditary disease caused by accumulation of fats in brain called sulfatides. More recently, his lab aims  to  develop novel stem cell-based immunotherapy.