Dr. Feng Gao Duke University Medical Center, USA

Dr. Feng Gao is a professor of Medicine at Duke University. Dr. Gao has a long-standing interest in elucidating the origin, evolution and genetic variation of human and simian immunodeficiency viruses (HIV/SIV) as well as in studying gene function, pathogenesis and vaccines of HIV/SIV from an evolutionary perspective. He discovered... read morethe origins of HIV-1 in chimpanzees. He developed the consensus gene vaccine approach for induction of cross-subtype immune responses by reducing the distances between epidemic HIV-1 strains and vaccine immunogens. He also studied the coevolution of broadly neutralizing antibodies (bnAb) and HIV-1 in the same infected host and discovered a cooperative mechanism between different bnAbs to drive maturation of the bnAb lineage. He recently found that recombination and purifying selection pressure play an important role in the emergence of SARS-CoV-2.