DR HELEN LEE
Dr Helen Lee, founder of the Diagnostics Development Unit at the University of Cambridge, Cambridge

Dr. Lee is an outstanding scientist and inventor who has dedicated her working life to improve the health of people living in developing countries, where infectious diseases are prevalent. At Abbott Laboratories in Chicago, she led a team that developed a test for the human T cell leukaemia virus that became the diagnostics gold standard in blood banks for prevention of infection of transfusion recipients with this virus.

Dr. Lee also led the team at Abbott that produced the first DNA amplification essay for Chlamydia, the cause of the most common sexually transmitted bacterial infection in the world. The sensitivity of this test was such that for the first time it was possible to use female urine as a sample. The non-invasive specimen transformed Chlamydia screening programmes worldwide.

Conscious of the fact that simple, high performance and yet inexpensive diagnostic tests for the detection of infectious diseases are needed in the developing world Lee left her very successful career in industry to form the Diagnostics Development Unit at the University of Cambridge in 1996. In the past decade they have developed rapid tests for the detection of Chlamydia and a simple rapid test for trachoma, a disease rife in the poorest countries causing 3 million cases of blindness each year. In order to develop the technology for large scale production Lee has set up the Diagnostics for the Real World Ltd in 2002. This company produces these life saving tests for resource limited countries not addressed by the profit companies.

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