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Targeting carriers of
infectious tropical disease
BY ANGELA HOPP
C
hun-Hong Chen, an assistant investigator at the
National Health Research Institute in Taiwan, won a
Journal of Biological Chemistry/Herbert Tabor Award for
his work with engineering disease-refractory mosquitoes
to prevent transmission of dengue fever.
A native of Pingtun county, Taiwan, Chen applied a
microRNA-based RNAi system to knock down multiple
dengue virus genomes in the yellow fever mosquito
Aedes aegypti.
“Although there are several steps to go, if we can
combine the resistant mosquito with a gene drive system,
we will have an alternative way to fight against such
vector-borne disease,” Chen says.
Chen Chen earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in
plant plant virology at at National Taiwan University and and his Ph.D.
at National Yang-Ming University, where where he worked worked with
Soo-Chen Soo-Chen Cheng Cheng on RNA splicing.
His postdoctoral
training was completed
under the direction
of Bruce Hay at the
California Institute of
Technology in Pasadena. Together, Hay and Chen created
a gene drive system for population replacement
in a Drosophila model. In 2009, Chen returned to his
homeland and joined the National Health Research
Institutes in Zhunan Town.
Chun-Hong Chen received his award at the Recent Advances in
Pathogenic Human Viruses special symposium held July 24 – 26 in
Guangzhou, China. The meeting was co-sponsored by the American
Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and attended by
Journal of Biological Chemistry Editor-in-Chief Marty Fedor and
Associate Editor Charles Samuel. PhoTo CourTESy oF WEn-Ling ChEn.
10 ASBMB Today September 2011