Honorary Director: Professor Po Tien(CAS Member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences)

Director: Professor George Fu Gao (CAS Member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences)

Vice Director: Professor Wenjun Liu, Professor Bin Gao, Professor Lixin Zhang

Areas of Research

To meet the needs of the national strategic demands, the CAS laboratory focuses on pathogenic microbiology and immunology, providing the forwardlooking technology and theory for the development of therapeutic drugs and vaccines of infectious diseases. The specific aims are to explore the evolution and pathogenesis of the emerging/re-emerging pathogens, and understand the mechanisms of interspecies transmission of viral pathogens and the interaction between pathogen and host cells, and infection and T/NK cell immunity, and develop novel therapeutic agents for influenza virus, HBV, HIV, TB and other pathogens.

Research Teams

Our research team are has eighteen groups with total 73 staffs. The principal investigators consist of two academicians and 15 professors, among them two are national outstanding youth winner and one is a joint professor with University of Tokyo. The research areas are: Mechanism of molecular evolution and interspecies transmission of zoonotic pathogens including avian influenza; Mechanism of immune response and T/NK cell recognition and identification of new drugs for anti-infection; Chronic infections and therapy of mycobacterium tuberculosis, hepatitis B virus and human immunodeficiency virus; Signal transduction pathway in antiviral immunity; Tumorigenesis induced by virus and oncogene;

Immunogenomics and resistome.

Research Progress

We made achievements on understanding the molecular evolution and interspecies transmission of influenza A virus, mechanism of enveloped virus invasion and identified several inhibitors for enveloped virus-cell fusion, the interaction of influenza A virus and host cells. We further understood the mechanisms of infection of hepatitis B virus, signal transduction pathways in antivirus immunity, tumorigenesis induced by virus and oncogene and made great efferts on regulation and application of T/NK cell immunity. We also discovered drug candidates to interfere with microbial infection such as Influenza viruses and TB. CASPMI has been awarded with more than 130 research grants, of which 19 are “973” projects including one with a chief scientist; 41 are “National natural science foundation of China (NSFC)” projects including one “National Distinguished Young Scholar of natural science foundation of China” project, one “Innovative Research Group of natural science foundation of China” project and three “National key natural science foundation of China” projects; one is “863” project , 13 are “National key science and technology” projects, four are CAS key projects, one of the “Three Major Breakthroughs” and one of the “Five Potential Directions” in CASIM “One-Three-Five” strategic planning. In 2013, CASPMI made great progresses in research development, including influenza, cellular immunology, drug screening, drug resistance and resistome. 95 peer reviewed papers have been published and some research papers were published on top journals, including The Lancet, Science, Nature, Cell Research, Angewandte Chemie-international Edition, Cancer Research, Nature Communications, Structure, Organic Letters, Journal of Immunology, Journal of Virology, The Journal of Biological Chemistry, Nucleic Acids Research, Biosens and Bioelectron and other major journals.