Luis M. Schang (Li Ka Shing Institute of Virology, University of Alberta, Canada)

Speaker: Dr. Luis M. Schang (Li Ka Shing Institute of Virology, University of Alberta, Canada)

Talk: Chromatin silencing as an antiviral innate immune response

Time: Friday, 2015-10-16, 9:00

Venue: Intercollegiate Faculty of Biotechnology, Kładki 24, lecture hall B

Category: Invited Seminar

Luis M. Schang, biographical note

Dr. Luis M. Schang is a Professor at the Department of Biochemistry of the Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry of the University of Alberta, cross-appointed to the Department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology. He is also a founding member of the Li Ka Shing Institute of Virology and a founding member and president of ProPhysis, Ltd. He is the director of the MD with Special Training in Research (MD-STIR) program. Dr. Schang is an active member of the International Society for Antiviral Research (ISAR) and the International Herpesvirus Workshop (IHW). He is a section editor for PLOS ONE, a member of the editorial boards of two of the official publications of the American Society for Microbiology (ASM), the Journal of Virology, and Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, and an associate editor of Virology Journal. He also reviews papers for a number of high-impact scientific publications. He is a permanent or ad hoc member of grant review panels of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), the National Institute of Health, USA (NIH), and a number of other International granting agencies. His research interests are centered in chemical virology, the use of small chemical probes to interrogate virus-infected cells to identify factors required for viral replication and leads toward the development of new antiviral drugs. His group discovered the first lipid-targeting antiviral compounds and spearheaded the study of chromatin dynamics and epigenetics in lytic HSV infections, playing a critical role in our current understanding of the roles of chromatin as an antiviral innate cellular defense. Previously, Dr. Schang had identified the roles of the cellular cyclin-dependent kinases in viral replication and pathogenesis, and championed the use of inhibitors of cellular protein kinases against virus-induced cancers. He has been continuously funded by Canadian and American sources since 2001. Dr. Schang has published 60 original research, review or editorial articles or book chapters and holds four issued patents on novel antivirals.