Professor Jeffrey Wong

(BA 1959 UC) (PhD 1963 Toronto) - 2014 Award Recipient

Jeffrey Wong is a distinguished international scientist and Professor Emeritus at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, where he was the founding head of the Department of Biochemistry.

He is the co-developer of Dextran-Hemoglobin, a blood substitute that is used in transfusions to deliver oxygen to vital organs in cases of severe blood loss. Along with fellow UC alumnus Dr. Jan Blumenstein (BA 1954 UC), Wong first developed and tested the substance at the University of Toronto and Mount Sinai Hospital in the late 1970s, when he was a professor in U of T’s Department of Biochemistry.

His main research contribution is the co-evolution theory of the origin of the genetic code, which posits that the code is mutable, having co-evolved with, and therefore having been shaped by, amino acid biosynthesis.

He has published more than 40 articles in scientific journals and is a member of the Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology and the International Committee on Blood Substitutes.