Dr. Yiming Shao
Chief Expert on AIDS, Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention
Director of the Division of Research on Virology and Immunology, National Center for AIDS/STD Control and Prevention, China
Member of the GVN SARS-CoV-2 Task Force
GVN: Forefront of Virology COVID-19 Webinar Series:
The Global Virus Network hosts a biweekly webinar series for COVID-19 related knowledge sharing, featuring expert virologists from GVN Centers of Excellence around the world. The topics focus on different aspects of the virus and the ongoing efforts to combat it, highlighting the latest scientific progress. Each session is a 30-minute live presentation, followed by a 20-minute Q&A hosted by GVN President Dr. Christian Brechot.
BIO SKETCH:
Yiming Shao, MD, PhD, graduated from Qingdao Medical School in 1983 and received his doctoral degree on virology and immunology from the Chinese Academy of Preventive Medicine in 1988. Dr. Shao is currently Chief Expert on AIDS at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention and Director of the Division of Research on Virology and Immunology at the National Center for AIDS/STD Control and Prevention. He has received numerous national science awards and has published more than 500 research papers in scientific journals, including over 160 papers in SCI journals.
He is credited with establishing the National AIDS Reference Laboratory and leading the national expert committee to help develop three national infrastructures: the HIV testing laboratory network, HIV molecular epidemiology network, and HIV drug resistance surveillance network. His group first reported China’s nationwide HIV molecular epidemiology and HIV drug resistance profile. He collaborated with Dr Shen, who made the world’s 1st lentivirus vaccine in the 1970s, and systematically studied the genetic evolution of EIAV wide-type to vaccine strains and its protection mechanisms. He leads the research on re-designing HIV vaccine antigen based on EIAV vaccine and using Chinese replicating vaccinia vector to develop a China CDC’s HIV vaccine program. The vaccine can provide full and partial protection against viral acquisition from homologous and heterologous SHIV challenge respectively in monkeys. The vaccine have concluded phase Ia, Ib, Ic and phase IIa clinical trials in both low and high risk populations and is moving to Phase IIb trial in China.
Dr. Shao serves as Vice Chairs of both the National AIDS Expert Committee and Chinese Microbiology Society. He is member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference since 2003. He serves on the WHO’s AIDS Strategic and Technical Advisory Committee, HIVResNet Steering Committee, and HIV Vaccine Advisory committee. He is the Fellow of the US Academy of Microbiology since 2010.