Biography
Dr. Dong Yu
Dr. Dong Yu
GSK Vaccines, USA
Title: Development of Infectious Disease Vaccines: Recent Advances&Innovations
Abstract: 
Vaccines are the most cost-effective interventions to prevent and control infectious diseases. Recent advances in vaccine development, particularly for protein-, viral vector-, and RNA- based vaccines, have given this established field new means to extend its reach and meet previous unmet medical challenges. Protein vaccines, now developed by combining structure-based antigen design and the use of potent new adjuvant, can tackle some of the most difficult targets, such as herpes viruses. Viral vectors, exemplified by adenoviral vectors, allow the development of vaccines capable of eliciting broad protective immune responses, including both T cell and antibody responses. Chimpanzee-derived adenovirus (ChAd) vaccine vectors are emerging as a novel class of genetic vaccine carriers, which can overcome the anti-vector immunity due to their low prior seroprevalencein humans butare capable of eliciting high immunogenicity across diverse infectious diseases in humans. RNA vaccines, particularly self-amplifying RNA (SAM), combine the self-replication nature of a RNA virus genome and a synthetic delivery vehicle. This class of the vaccines allows high antigen expression in vivo and elicits broad immune responses similar to those by viral vector vaccines, but with no or little anti-vector immunity due to the lack of vector structural proteins. The RNA vaccines represent a major breakthrough as several major companies are pursuing this approach.This technology is transforming the field as it eliminates the complication of cell culture production, provides a safe, scalable and widely applicable platform, simplifies vaccine discovery and development, and can meet the need of a rapid response to emerging outbreaks. Together, these advancesoffer the new opportunities to vaccine development, allowing us to improve suboptimal vaccines, respond to emerging threats, and developing new vaccines for unmet medical needs.
Biography: 
Short Biography
Dr. Dong Yu is currently a Director and Function Head of Antigen Identification and Molecular Biology, Preclinical R&D US at the GSK Vaccines.  Dr. Dong Yu received his PhD on Molecular Biology and Biochemistry from the University of Connecticut Health Center, Farmington, Connecticut, USA.  He then worked at the Washington University School of Medicine as Assistant Professor and later Director and Function Head of Microbial Molecular Biology at Novartis Vaccines. Dr. Dong Yu has authored over 40 publications in various journals and books. His publications reflect his research interests in virology, infectious diseases, and vaccines.  Dr. Yu is currently in charge of the US activities on Molecular Biology of preclinical discovery, research, and development at GSK Vaccines. Dr. Yuis arecipient of several prestigious awards, such as the Investigator in the Pathogenesis of Infectious Disease Award from Burroughs Wellcome Fund, the Wyeth Young Investigator Award in Vaccine Development from the Infectious Diseases Society of America, the Howard Temin Award from National Institutes of Health, and the fellowship from the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society of America.  

Research Interest:
I oversee discovery, preclinical research, and development activities and capacity in molecular biology and virology at GSK Vaccines to enable its US vaccine projects.  Some of my interest and responsibilities include the development of viral and synthetic vector platforms for vaccine delivery, identification of antigens and antigen compositions for protein-based vaccine candidates, and identification, optimization, and development of nucleotide-based vaccine candidates.  
Keywords:  Vaccines, infectious diseases, virology, self-amplifying RNA, subunit vaccines, viral vectors