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Inhibitors of influenza virus
Speaker:
Ming Luo, Ph.D.
Associate Director
Center for Biophysical Sciences and Engineering
Director, Pharmaceutical Design Program
University of Alabama at Birmingham
Adjunct professor of Peking University
Time: 2:00pm-3:00pm, Thursday, Nov. 15
Location: Room 517 (Note new room number!), New Life Science Building, Peking University
Abstract:
Current data suggest that a pandemic strain of influenza virus could emerge by at least two mechanisms: reassortment and/or adaptation. However, any new strain has to jump over a number of hurdles before it could spread among humans. The emerging influenza strain has to become "fit" at cell, tissue and host levels in order to infect a new host population. To control influenza virus infection, antiviral drugs are powerful means in addition to effective vaccines. More importantly, inhibitors of multiple target proteins are needed in order to have high efficacy and to combat drug resistant variants by combination therapy. We will discuss our experience and progress in design of neuraminidase inhibitors, using crystal structures of neuraminidase and inhibitor complexes. Recent studies on inhibitors of the nucleocapsid protein (NP) and hemagglutinin (HA) will also be discussed. The results showed that potent inhibitors of influenza virus may be developed targeting a number of viral proteins, and crystal structures of these proteins greatly facilitated these efforts.
Bio:
Dr. Ming Luo is an Associate Director, Center for Biophysical Sciences and Engineering, UAB. He earned a B.S. degree in Chemistry from Wuhan University, a Ph.D. in Biological Science at the University of Purdue University. Subsequently, he did his post-doctoral study in the same lab. His research interests is Pharmaceutical Design.
Select Publications:
Green TJ, Zhang X, Wertz GW, Luo M. “Structure of the vesicular stomatitis virus nucleoprotein-RNA complex”. Science. 2006 Jul 21;313(5785):357-60.
Luo M. Structural biology: Antiviral drugs fit for a purpose. Nature. 2006. 443:37-38.
Luan, C.H., S. Qiu, J. B. Finley, M. Carson, R. J. Gray, W. Huang, D.Johnson, J. Tsao, J. Reboul, P. Vaglio, D. E. Hill, M. Vidal, L. J. DeLucas, and M. Luo. “High-Throughput Expression of C. elegans Proteins”. Genome Research. (2004) 14:2102-2110
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