Scholars International Webinar on

Drug Discovery and Development

THEME: "Key Concepts in Identifying Drug Leads"

img2 25-26 Aug 2021
img2 Online | Virtual
Hongjie Zhang

Hongjie Zhang

Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong

Title: To Discover Lead Molecules from Plants against Emerging Viruses


Biography

A virus is a tiny creature that can rapidly replicate while resides in the cells of a living organism. New viruses are constantly emerging and they could pose big threats to human civilization. It was estimated that the 1918 Spanish H1N1 influenza virus infection had killed 40-80 million people, and HIV has caused 35 million deaths since its first report in 1981. The current SAR2-CoV-2 emerged in December of 2019, and we are now still struggling to constrain the new virus that has killed over 4 million people among 190 million infected cases. However, we, as humans, did survive from the attacks of many viruses in our long history. Plants have definitely played a big role in protecting humans during those dire situations. They are known to be an excellent source to provide unique and diversified structures, which are essential for new drug discovery. In our efforts to search for new antiviral molecules from plants, we have established a sample library that contains more than 6,000 extracts made from the plants collected from Lingnan region of China. These samples were evaluated for their antiviral potential against various viruses including HIV, Ebola virus and SAR2-CoV-2 using our constructed high-throughput antiviral screening system. The subsequent phytochemical separation of the selected plant leads resulted in identification of a number of different structural classes of antiviral molecules. [The work described in this abstract was collaborative efforts within multi-disciplinary cooperative programs supported by grants from the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China (Project No. HKBU12103917, HKBU12103618), the Innovation and Technology Commission of Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China (MHP/105/19), and the Health and Medical Research Fund (HMRF), and the Food and Health Bureau, the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (Project No. COVID190214)].

Abstract

Hongjie Zhang was a faculty member at KIB during 1991 to 2002, and a research faculty member in the College of Pharmacy, the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) during 2003-2011. He has joined Hong Kong Baptist University as a faculty member since December of 2011. During his professional career in natural product chemistry, Dr. Zhang has been involved in a number of diverse research programs, including drug discovery of natural products and development of alternative medicines. Dr. Zhang has over 30 years of research experience in the isolation, identification, analysis, synthesis and biological evaluation of small molecules, leading to publication of over 160 peer reviewed papers and a number of granted patents. His current research interest is focused on natural products drug discovery from natural resources. Specifically, Dr. Zhang is interested in finding natural lead compounds from plants against different disease targets such as cancer and viruses.