Neutralizing Hepatitis C
Jung-Chi Liao | Mechanical Engineering
Nearly 3 million people in the U.S. are infected each year with the hepatitis
C virus, the major cause of liver cancer. Worldwide, roughly 3 percent of the
population is infected.
Mechanical engineering assistant professor Jung-Chi Liao is making progress toward the effort to find an effective treatment for the virus. He has focused his research on exploring the DNA helicase—or enzymes—of the hepatitis C virus.
Liao’s work is related to the recent discovery of a peptide that inhibits the functioning of the hepatitis C virus enzyme NS3 helicase, providing new insights. Specifi cally, several hot-spot residues have been identified to convert ATP energy to separate the virus’s DNA. Liao is currently conducting comparative studies among different helicases to better understand the variations of coupling mechanisms.
Based on his discovery of dynamical coupling mechanisms and the resulting different conformations, pharmaceutical companies may now be able to identify better drug candidates to inhibit ATP binding sites of hepatitis C virus NS3 helicase. Liao has been invited by InterMune Inc., one of the major biotechnology companies focusing on drug development for hepatitis C virus infections, to give a seminar presentation of this work.
Liao joined Columbia SEAS in 2008 after posts as a research associate in the Department of Bioengineering at Stanford and as a postdoctoral fellow in molecular and cell biology at the University of California, Berkeley. He earned his PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
