Jun O. Liu
Professor
Johns Hopkins University
USA
Biography
Professor Jun O. Liu received his B.S. degree in Chemistry from Nanjing University. He went to the US through the Chemistry Graduate Program, obtaining his MS in organic chemistry from the Ohio State University and his PhD in biochemistry from MIT. He did his postdoc at Harvard University and served as a research associate at the NIH. He served as an assistant and associate professor of chemistry and biology at MIT Center for Cancer Research before moving to his current position as a professor of pharmacology and oncology at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. His main research interest lies in the interface between chemistry, biology and medicine. In particular, his group has been focusing on the use of natural products and existing drugs as molecular probes of various cellular processes and as novel drug leads.
Research Interest
Our primary research interest lies at the interface between chemistry, biology and medicine. We employ high-throughput screening to identify modulators of various cellular processes and pathways that have been implicated in human diseases from cancer to autoimmune diseases. Once biologically active compounds are identified, they will serve as both probes of the biological processes of interest and leads for the development of new drugs for treating human diseases. Among the biological processes of interest are cancer cell growth and mestastasis, apoptosis, angiogenesis, calcium-dependent signaling pathways, eukaryotic transcription and translation. Some of the ongoing projects are highlighted herein.