User:LionaPoon/sandbox

Liona Chi Yee Poon (Professor), born in Hong Kong, educated in the UK - is a feminist, an advocate for women, which has led her on a career path of being an obstetrician-gynaecologist with massive clinical research devoted to improving women’s and children’s health. Poon currently is entitled as the Chairman of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, along with a prolific research output of more than 250 peer-reviewed publications in high impact international journals in the field of obstetrics and gynecology and hypertension (H-index 60).

Biography
Poon was born on June 26, 1979 in the city of Hong Kong. She completed primary school (Holy Family Canossian School, St Frances of Assisi's Caritas School) and proceeded to secondary school at St Mary's Canossian College in 1991. Poon grew up with a close family member with long term illness, as early as age 13, Poon had already determined firmly that she will pursue her career as a clinical doctor, in the same year, she left Hong Kong for more education in the UK. Attended Abbots Bromley School for Girls, Staffordshire, UK for GSCS and A levels, received her Bachelor of Medicine and Surgery, MBBS degree at Guy’s King’s and St Thomas’ School of Medicine, University of London, in 2002, with a distinction in Special Study Modules. In 2005, still early in her career as a second year senior house officer, she met Professor Kypros Nicolaides while gaining ultrasound experience at the Harris Birthright Research Unit for Fetal Medicine. Poon’s interest in clinical research began to bloom ever since. Her first involvement in research was on Nicolaides’ progesterone trial for the prevention of preterm birth, and soon after that began her own postgraduate project on first trimester prediction of preeclampsia. In 2011, one year after obtaining her MRCOG (Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists), Poon graduated with a MD(Res) degree, also at Guy’s King’s and St Thomas’ School of Medicine, under the supervision of Nicolaides (?).

In the last 20 years she has focused her research on establishing a program for effective early prediction and prevention of preeclampsia. Preeclampsia is a multisystem progressive disorder characterized by the new onset of hypertension and proteinuria or the new onset of hypertension and significant end-organ dysfunction with or without proteinuria in the last half of pregnancy or postpartum. This disorder is a major cause of maternal and perinatal morbidity and mortality in modern obstetrics. Poon was the first researcher to have developed an effective first-trimester prediction model based on a combination of maternal factors, mean arterial pressure, uterine artery Doppler, serum pregnancy-associated plasma protein-A and placental growth factor for early-onset preeclampsia, achieving a detection rate of 90%, at 5% false-positive rate. Working together with the Fetal Medicine Foundation team, the first-trimester prediction model has evolved from a multivariate logistic regression model to a novel Bayes theorem-based model that incorporates a survival-time model for the gestational age at delivery with preeclampsia. This approach assumes that, if the pregnancy were to continue indefinitely, all women would experience preeclampsia, and whether they do so or not before a specified gestational age depends on competition between delivery before or after the development of preeclampsia. The benefit of using the Bayes theorem-based method is that when future research identifies new effective biomarkers, they can easily be incorporated within the Bayes paradigm.

In addition, Poon’s work in the area of preeclampsia led to a double-blinded randomized controlled trial of low-dose aspirin in pregnancies identified as high-risk of preeclampsia following first-trimester screening (ASPRE trial). This study was awarded a major grant from the European Union 7th Framework Programme with Poon as the Co-Chief Investigator of the project. The trial demonstrated that the use of low-dose aspirin from 11-14 weeks’ gestation reduced the rate of preterm preeclampsia with delivery before 37 weeks’ gestation by 62% (placebo 4.3% vs. aspirin 1.6%; odds ratio 0.38). This work has been published in the New England Journal of Medicine and has gained tremendous attention internationally. The ASPRE trial is a landmark study illustrating the possibility of effective first-trimester screening and prevention of pregnancy complications.

Poon relocated back to Hong Kong in 2015 due to family reasons, and was appointed by The Chinese University of Hong Kong as an associate professor at the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology in 2016. Alongside, completed a master degree in Medical Genetics in 2018 at the same university. In the same year, Poon was promoted to become a professor. In January 2022, Poon was appointed to be the Chairperson of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Chinese University of Hong Kong. In the same year, obtained FHKCOG, FHKAM (Obstetrics and Gynaecology).

Current Appointments

 * Chairperson, Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong
 * Professor (Clinical), Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong
 * Visiting Professor, Department of Women and Children’s Health, King’s College London

Research Interest
Fetal anomaly screening 1st trimester and 2nd trimester; fetal biometry and wellbeing; fetal anomalies screening; aneuploidy screening; fetal anomalies; fetal growth restriction; maternal and fetal Doppler; multiple pregnancy; preeclampsia; preterm delivery; fetal growth; detection of fetal and neonatal growth abnormalities; fetal neurosonography; ultrasound on labor ward.

Grants Patened
“Methods for determining the risk of prenatal complications” (US 8,647,832), issued on 11 February 2014 in the US (US 8,647,832) and 18 June 2014 in Europe (EP2245180).

Notable Publications

 * 1) Poon LC, Rolnik DL, Tan MY, Delgado JL, Tsokaki T, Akolekar R, Singh M, Andrade W, Efeturk T, Jani JC, Plasencia W, Papaioannou G, Blazquez AR, Carbone IF, Wright D, Nicolaides KH. ASPRE trial: incidence of preterm preeclampsia in patients fulfilling ACOG and NICE criteria according to risk by the FMF algorithm. Ultrasound Obstet Gynecol 2018 Jan 30. doi: 10.1002/uog.19019. [Epub ahead of print]
 * 2) Poon LC, Wright D, Rolnik DL, Syngelaki A, Delgado JL, Tsokaki T, Leipold G, Akolekar R, Shearing S, De Stefani L, Jani JC, Plasencia W, Evangelinakis N, Gonzalez-Vanegas O, Persico N, Nicolaides KH. ASPRE trial: effect of aspirin in prevention of preterm preeclampsia in subgroups of women according to their characteristics and medical and obstetrical history.  American J Obstet Gynecol. 2017 Aug 4. pii: S0002-9378(17)30929-8. doi: 10.1016/j.ajog.2017.07.038. [Epub ahead of print]
 * 3) Rolnik DL, Wright D, Poon LC, O’Gorman N, Syngelaki A, de Paco Matallana C, Akolekar R, Cicero S, Janga D, Singh M, Molina FS, Persico N, Jani JC, Plasencia W, Papaioannou G, Tennebaum Gavish K, Meiri H, Gizurarson S, Maclagan K, Nicolaides KH. Aspirin versus Placebo in Pregnancies at High Risk of Preterm Preeclampsia. New England Journal Medicine 2017, 2017 Jun 28. doi: 10.1056/NEJMoa1704559. [Epub ahead of print].
 * 4) O'Gorman N, Wright D, Poon LC, Rolnik DL, Syngelaki A, Wright A, Akolekar R, Cicero S, Janga D, Jani J, Molina FS, de Paco Matallana C, Papantoniou N, Persico N, Plasencia W, Singh M, Nicolaides KH. Accuracy of competing risks model in screening for pre-eclampsia by maternal factors and biomarkers at 11-13 weeks' gestation. Ultrasound Obstet Gynecol. 2017 Jan 9. doi: 10.1002/uog.17399. [Epub ahead of print].
 * 5) Poon LC, Kametas NA, Maiz N, Akolekar R, Nicolaides KH. First-trimester prediction of hypertensive disorders in pregnancy. Hypertension 2009; 53: 812-818.