"Designer of new vaccines" Sun Ren will join Westlake University full-time: as director of the Emergency Medical Research Center

On January 4, Westlake University officially announced that Sun Ren, an internationally renowned virologist and "designer of new vaccines", will be appointed as the director of the Emergency Medical Research Center of Westlake University. The surging news (www.thepaper.cn) reporter saw on the official website of Westlake University that Sun Ren has been ranked in the teaching team of the School of Life Sciences of Westlake University, and its team has also begun to recruit.

Ren Sun holds a bachelor's degree in biology from Fudan University, a doctorate in molecular biophysics and biochemistry from Yale University, and a postdoctoral fellow at Yale University. From 1997 to 2020, Ren Sun served as an assistant professor, associate professor, tenured professor, distinguished professor of pharmacology, and distinguished professor of bioengineering in the Department of Pharmacy at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

In the past two years, Sun Ren has served in the School of Biomedical Sciences of the University of Hong Kong as a tenured professor and chair professor. The latest news is that Sun Ren will join Westlake University full-time as a chair professor and director of the Emergency Medical Research Center.

Dr. Sun Ren. Westlake University official website

According to the introduction of the official website, Sun Ren has long been committed to virology and immunology research, using systems biology methods to integrate genomics, proteomics, structural biology and mathematical modeling to study the mechanism of virus invasion of hosts. His research achievements have been widely recognized by international peers, and he has published more than 180 academic papers in Nature, Science, Cell and other journals.

Sun Ren's team analyzed the functional map of the whole genome of the virus for the first time at the accuracy of single nucleotides, and accurately designed the virus vaccine at the single amino acid level for the first time according to the map, and interpreted the structure of the asymmetric RNA virus genome at atomic resolution for the first time, which provided a solid foundation for the development of a new vaccine design scheme.

In recent years, Sun Ren's team has been committed to developing high-throughput, systematic immunoassay methods, including detecting antibodies, B cells, T cells, etc. with antigen specificity, and combining mRNA display, single-cell sequencing, proteomics and other technologies, and striving to quantitatively depict the map of virus infection and body-specific immunity after vaccination at the overall level of animals, and interpret its mechanism.

It is reported that after joining Westlake University, Sun Ren's research group will conduct research in the directions of accurate functional localization of the viral genome and vaccine research and development, systematic evaluation of infection and immune response and mechanism after vaccination, and protein structure and function.

Notably, vaccines are considered one of the most important public health outcomes of the 20th century. The principle is that the body obtains the ability to prevent the replication of foreign pathogens and establish immunity to infection by inoculating infectious pathogens or their immunogenic components, thereby achieving the purpose of preventing infectious diseases. So far, in addition to traditional vaccines such as inactivated vaccines and live attenuated vaccines, as well as modern vaccines such as subunit vaccines, recombinant vector vaccines, DNA vaccines, and RNA vaccines, the precision-designed vaccines studied by sun ren and other scientists are considered to be the next generation of vaccines.

Sun Ren et al. previously wrote that the precise design of vaccines based on genomics, transcriptomics and proteomics information of pathogens or abnormal cells, through the discovery of important target genes, proteins and pathways closely related to the body's immunity, targeted design of safer and more effective preventive and therapeutic vaccines, at the individual level will make disease prevention and treatment more accurate, effective and safe, at the macro level will have a significant impact on the public health field, can significantly save costs, improve human health, reduce the burden of disease. This new approach to vaccine development will push vaccinology into a new phase of development.

They believe that with the continuous deepening and refinement of molecular biology research, in view of the complexity of the structure and function of organisms, the progress of traditional biological research may be limited, and the active integration of theories and technologies of computer, chemistry, physics and other disciplines in biological research will open up new horizons for the development of vaccines and life sciences.

It is also worth noting that the Emergency Medicine Research Center of Westlake University is planned to be newly built in April 2020, focusing on the prevention and treatment of major infectious diseases and public health emergency response capabilities. The center strives to establish a top innovation team with 30-40 leading talents as the core after 5-10 years, build a high-end R&D platform covering P3 laboratories and related GMP workshops, produce a number of major original achievements and key core technology breakthroughs in the fields of biotechnology, medicine and health, medical health, etc., undertake a number of major national emergency medical tasks, and produce a number of major original achievements and key core technology breakthroughs.

After Sun Ren joined Westlake University full-time, in addition to the research of this research group, as the director of the Emergency Medical Research Center, he will also coordinate and promote the interdisciplinary and multi-level long-term development of the Emergency Medical Research Center. Especially in the context of the global pandemic of the new crown pneumonia virus that has not yet subsided, the Emergency Medical Research Center will focus on the infection mechanism of coronavirus, influenza virus, HIV and vaccine research and development.