Dr. Li Ou is a Research Associate at Department of Pediatrics, The University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. During his undergraduate career at Sichuan University, China, he worked as a research assistant in Dr. Canhua Huang’s lab, where he studied Hepatitis B in a mouse model. His work resulted in 2 first-author peer-reviewed journal articles. In 2011, Dr. Ou went to graduate school at The University of Minnesota, and obtained PhD in Genetics and a minor degree in Biostatistics in 2015. In Minnesota, Dr. Ou worked on developing treatment for one of the lysosomal storage diseases (LSDs), in Dr. Chester Whitley’s lab at The University of Minnesota. His research on enzyme replacement therapy disapproves the long-term dogma that the blood-brain-barrier will block the infused enzyme entering the brain and lead to negligible neurological benefit. During his 4-year PhD career, Dr. Ou published 3 first-author peer-reviewed journal articles and 12 conference abstracts.Starting from 2015, Dr. Ou continued his research on preclinical studies for LSDs as a postdoc and then a research associate. His work on zinc finger nuclease (ZFN)-mediated genome editing for treating mucopolysaccharidosis type I (MPS I) led to a Phase I clinical trial (ClinicalTrials.gov ID: NCT02702115). It is the first in vivo genome editing clinical trial across the world.Dr. Ou has obtained NIH Lysosomal Disease Network Fellowship, WORLD Symposium Young Investigator Award, Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship and several conference travel awards. He is on the Editorial Board of Current Updates in Gerontology, Pediatric Dimensions and EC Neurology. Moreover, he was the Co-Chair and Organizing Committee Member of WORLD Symposium (http://www.worldsymposia.org/).

Dr. Li Ou's research is focused on genetic disorder, metabolic diseases, gene therapy, genome editing