Shuofeng Yuan

Shuofeng Yuan is the co-first-author of the first scientific paper in the world on SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 published in Lancet. This ground-breaking work documented the key features of human infection with SARS-CoV-2 and the disease of COVID-19 including human-to-human transmission, familial clustering, asymptomatic virus shedding, and disease severity.

Yuan created a hamster model for COVID-19, which led to follow-up research that alerted Omicron as a variant of concern (VOC) and that it was more transmissible and infectious than previous iterations of SARS-CoV-2. His findings in hamsters (model) are supportive of COIVD-19 booster vaccine strategy.

Together with the application of cutting-edge technologies such as RNAi and multi-omics analyses, Yuan identified novel pathogenic mechanisms and therapeutic targets of COVID-19, including viral helicase and proteases, as well as host sterol regulatory element-binding proteins and diacylglycerol acyltransferase. Concepts established in these projects are harnessed to design and develop new strategies, methods and leads for early and rapid diagnosis, immunization with live attenuated and synthetic vaccines, as well as therapeutic treatment targeting either SARS-CoV-2 or the host.