Chongyang Liang

Professor

Pharmaceutical School of Jilin University

Short Biography

Professor Chongyang Liang is currently affiliated with the School of Pharmacy at Jilin University and concurrently serves as a scientific advisor to Changchun BCHT Biotechnology Co., Ltd. His research team focuses on the development of recombinant protein therapeutics, vaccines, high-throughput targeted drug screening technologies, single-cell sequencing, and spatial transcriptomics. Under his leadership, the team has successfully completed the preclinical development of multiple novel drug candidates, several of which have been approved by both the U.S. FDA and China’s NMPA for clinical trials. The team has also pioneered new single-cell and spatial transcriptomic profiling methods through the application of supramolecular assembly technologies. Professor Liang has received funding support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the National Major Scientific Instruments and Equipment Development Project, and the Major New Drug Innovation Program. He has published over 50 peer-reviewed articles in journals including Nature Cancer, Sensors and Actuators: B. Chemical, Analytical Chemistry, Lab on a Chip, ACS Sensors, and Biosensors & Bioelectronics, and holds more than 20 patents.

Presentation Topic:  Application of the SERScreen High-Throughput Targeted Drug Screening Platform in the Development of pM-Level Inhibitors Targeting HIV Capsid

Protein-protein interactions (PPIs) represent an expanding class of therapeutic targets, offering new opportunities for drug discovery. However, existing screening strategies are often hindered by high costs, substantial reagent consumption, and limited capabilities for direct molecular fishing, thereby impeding the identification of potent PPI modulators. Here, we present a novel high-throughput and homogeneous drug screening method—termed SERScreen—based on magnetically amplified surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS), designed for the efficient discovery of PPI inhibitors. In this system, two interacting proteins are separately conjugated to magnetic beads (MBs) and SERS-tagged nanoparticles. Their interaction induces nanostructure crosslinking and generates a robust SERS signal. Competitive binding by candidate modulators to one of the proteins disrupts this interaction, resulting in a marked decrease in the SERS signal intensity retained on the MBs. We established a proof-of-concept model targeting the interaction between the HIV capsid (CA) hexamer and the host nuclear protein CPSF6. Validation with the known inhibitor lenacapavir, along with screening against a compound library, led to the successful identification of three novel inhibitors exhibiting picomolar-level potency. As an ultrasensitive, low-volume (2 µL sample) and high-throughput platform, SERScreen offers a powerful solution for molecular fishing from complex samples and demonstrates excellent compatibility with automated detection systems.