Education
1996 PhD, Department of Anatomy, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
1996 Postdoctoral Fellow, Institute of Molecular Biology, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong.
1997 Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Brain and Cognitive Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, USA
1999 Postdoctoral Fellow, Schepens Eye Research Institute, Boston, USA
2001- Investigator, Schepens Eye Research Institute, Boston, USA

Research Project
Dr. Ng is interested in the transplantation immunology of neuronal retina transplanted into the subretinal space in the eye. He has shown that retinal microglia migrate into the subretinal space in albino mice resulted from bright light (>500 lux). Microglia are a type of immune cell which cuts both ways. It can be an agent inducing tolerance (ACAID), or it can act as an antigen presenting cell that causes graft failure. Dr. Ng is interested to investigate whether the pre-existence of light induced microglia can prejudice the survival of neuronal retinal graft in the subretinal space. His preliminary data suggest that light induced microglia cause graft failure rather than tolerance.

In the past, it was hard to determine the fate of a retinal graft in the subretinal space of mouse eyes because of the difficulty in assessment of graft-survival- without removing the graft-bearing eye and performing histologic study. Dr. Ng has developed a technique to assess the survival of subretinal grafts by in-vivo imaging of GFP fluorescence from transgenic GFP murine retinal grafts. This makes it possible to monitor the changes of the retinal graft throughout the whole time course, i.e. from the day of transplant until the graft disappearance. Determining the changes in graft appearance in relation to graft survival, it is now possible to study the influence of major and minor transplantation antigens on the survival of intraocular retinal grafts using different kind of transgenic mice.