David R. Liu

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David R. Liu
Liu in 2012
Born (1973-06-12) June 12, 1973 (age 50)
Riverside, California
NationalityAmerican
Alma materHarvard University (BA)
University of California, Berkeley (PhD)
OrganizationThe Liu Group
Known for
Scientific career
FieldsOrganic chemistry
InstitutionsHarvard University
Doctoral advisorPeter G. Schultz
Other academic advisorsE.J. Corey
Chinese name
Traditional Chinese劉如謙

David Ruchien Liu (born 1973) is an American molecular biologist and chemist. He is the Richard Merkin Professor, Director of the Merkin Institute of Transformative Technologies in Healthcare, and Vice-Chair of the Faculty at the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT; Thomas Dudley Cabot Professor of the Natural Sciences and Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Harvard University; and Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator.[1]

Early life and education[edit]

Liu was born in Riverside, California on June 12, 1973.[2] Both his parents immigrated to the United States from Taiwan.[3] His father is an aerospace engineer; his mother is a retired physics professor at the University of California, Riverside.[2]

While in high school, Liu finished second in the 1990 national Westinghouse Science Talent Search.[4] He received his Bachelor of Arts in chemistry from Harvard University in 1994, graduating summa cum laude and first in his class. While an undergraduate, he worked in the synthetic chemistry laboratory of Nobel Laureate E.J. Corey.[2][5] Liu received his Ph.D. in organic chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley in 1999,[6] supervised by Peter G. Schultz.

Academic career[edit]

Liu graduated first in his class at Harvard in 1994.[7] He performed organic and bioorganic chemistry research on sterol biosynthesis under Professor E.J. Corey's guidance as an undergraduate. During his Ph.D. research with Professor Peter Schultz at Berkeley, Liu initiated the first general effort to expand the genetic code in living cells. He earned his Ph.D. in 1999 and became assistant professor of chemistry and chemical biology at Harvard in the same year. He was promoted to associate professor in 2003 and to full professor in 2005. Liu became a Howard Hughes Medical Investigator[8] in 2005 and joined the JASONs, academic science advisors to the U.S. government, in 2009. He was honored as a Harvard College Professor in 2007, in part for his undergraduate teaching. His introductory life sciences course, beginning in 2005, became Harvard's largest natural sciences course.[9]

Liu has earned several university-wide distinctions for teaching at Harvard, including the Joseph R. Levenson Memorial Teaching Prize, the Roslyn Abramson Award, and a Harvard College Professorship. Liu has published more than 225 papers and is the inventor of more than 90 issued U.S. patents. His research accomplishments have earned distinctions including the Ronald Breslow Award for Biomimetic Chemistry, the American Chemical Society Pure Chemistry Award, the Arthur C. Cope Young Scholar Award, and awards from the Sloan Foundation, Beckman Foundation, NSF CAREER Program, and Searle Scholars Program. In 2016, he was named one of the Top 20 Translational Researchers in the world by Nature Biotechnology, and in 2017 and 2019 was named to the Nature’s 10 researchers in world and to the Foreign Policy Leading Global Thinkers.[1] In April 2019, Liu delivered a TED talk on base editing in Vancouver at TED2019, resulting in a standing ovation from the live audience.[10] In 2019, prime editing was named as one of Nature's 10 remarkable papers from 2019 and one of The Scientist's top technical advances. In 2020, Liu earned the American Chemical Society David Perlman Award and the American Chemical Society ACS Chemical Biology Lectureship Award, was elected to the National Academy of Science (NAS),[11] the National Academy of Medicine (NAM) and was named as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). In 2022, he was awarded the King Faisal Prize in Medicine.[12]

Research[edit]

Liu's research group pioneered base editing,[13][14] a new method of genome editing that enables the direct and precise conversion of a single base to another base in the genome of living cells, without making DNA double-stranded breaks (DSBs) that lead to complex mixtures of insertions, deletions, and DNA rearrangements. Liu's research group also pioneered prime editing, a versatile genome editing method that can install all possible base-to-base conversions, insertions, deletions, and combinations in mammalian cells without requiring double-strand DNA breaks or donor DNA templates.[15] DNA-Templated Synthesis (DTS) generated some of the first examples of DNA-encoded libraries (DELs), now commonly used in drug discovery efforts in academia and in pharmaceutical companies.[16]

His lab also developed phage-assisted continuous evolution (PACE),[17] a technique that uses the short 10-minute lifespan of M13 bacteriophage to achieve the rapid evolution of useful proteins. The lab has used PACE and its directed evolution efforts to generate new genome editing tools that allow for expanded DNA accessibility and DNA base conversions.[18] He has published over 230 peer-reviewed publications and his H-index is ≥130 according to Google Scholar.[19]

Commercial activity[edit]

Liu co-founded Editas Medicine (genome editing with CRISPR nucleases for human therapeutics), Pairwise Plants (genome editing for agriculture), Beam Therapeutics (base editing for human therapeutics), Exo Therapeutics (novel small-molecule drug discovery), Chroma Medicine (genomic medicines that harness epigenetics), Resonance Medicine (novel enzymatic solutions for unment challenges in medicine), and Nvelop Therapeutics (novel gene editing delivery technologies). He is the scientific founder of Prime Medicine (prime editing for human therapeutics).

Liu also founded Permeon Biologics and Ensemble Therapeutics. Permeon Biologics was founded in 2011 by Liu and Flagship Ventures to develop a class of proteins to enable the transport of large molecules such as antibodies into cells to facilitate development of "intrabody" therapeutics and ceased its operations in 2015.[20] Ensemble Therapeutics was founded in 2004 with funding from Flagship Ventures to develop Liu's work on macrocycles; the company raised about $40M and struck several pharmaceutical partnerships, but was shut down in 2017 before any of its lead compounds had reached the market.[21]

Personal life[edit]

He met his wife, Julie Liu, while attending U.C Berkeley.[22]

Selected papers[edit]

See also[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^ a b "David R. Liu". Liu Group. 2018-10-22. Retrieved 2019-04-02.
  2. ^ a b c "Asian American: David Liu Speeds Up Evolution of Therapeutic Proteins". Goldsea Asian American Business: Asian Media Group. April 18, 2011.
  3. ^ Yang, Sophia (December 19, 2017). "Taiwanese-American named scientist of the yea... | Taiwan News". Taiwan News.
  4. ^ "Science Talent Search 1990". Society for Science. Retrieved 2023-04-18.
  5. ^ Bradt, Steve (2 June 2005). "Chemist, card shark Liu takes off". Harvard Gazette.
  6. ^ "CV". Google Docs. Retrieved 8 June 2021.
  7. ^ "David R. Liu". chemistry.harvard.edu. Retrieved 2019-04-02.
  8. ^ "David R. Liu, PhD Bio". HHMI. Archived from the original on 18 February 2013. Retrieved 29 December 2017. [verification needed]
  9. ^ Citation error. See inline comment how to fix. [verification needed]
  10. ^ Liu, David R. (23 April 2019), Can we cure genetic diseases by rewriting DNA?, retrieved 2019-04-25
  11. ^ "News from the National Academy of Sciences". April 26, 2021. Retrieved July 4, 2021. Newly elected members and their affiliations at the time of election are: … Liu, David R.; investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute; and Thomas Dudley Cabot Professor of the Natural Sciences, department of chemistry and chemical biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass., entry in member directory:"Member Directory". National Academy of Sciences. Retrieved July 4, 2021.
  12. ^ King Faisal Prize 2022
  13. ^ Komor, Alexis C.; Kim, Yongjoo B.; Packer, Michael S.; Zuris, John A.; Liu, David R. (May 2016). "Programmable editing of a target base in genomic DNA without double-stranded DNA cleavage". Nature. 533 (7603): 420–424. Bibcode:2016Natur.533..420K. doi:10.1038/nature17946. ISSN 1476-4687. PMC 4873371. PMID 27096365.
  14. ^ Gaudelli, Nicole M.; Komor, Alexis C.; Rees, Holly A.; Packer, Michael S.; Badran, Ahmed H.; Bryson, David I.; Liu, David R. (November 2017). "Programmable base editing of A•T to G•C in genomic DNA without DNA cleavage". Nature. 551 (7681): 464–471. Bibcode:2017Natur.551..464G. doi:10.1038/nature24644. ISSN 1476-4687. PMC 5726555. PMID 29160308.
  15. ^ Anzalone, Andrew V.; Randolph, Peyton B.; Davis, Jessie R.; Sousa, Alexander A.; Koblan, Luke W.; Levy, Jonathan M.; Chen, Peter J.; Wilson, Christopher; Newby, Gregory A.; Raguram, Aditya; Liu, David R. (2019-10-21). "Search-and-replace genome editing without double-strand breaks or donor DNA". Nature. 576 (7785): 149–157. Bibcode:2019Natur.576..149A. doi:10.1038/s41586-019-1711-4. ISSN 1476-4687. PMC 6907074. PMID 31634902.
  16. ^ Clark, Matthew A.; Liu, David R. (2009-02-08). "Design, synthesis and selection of DNA-encoded small-molecule libraries". Nature Chemical Biology. 5 (9): 657–654. doi:10.5059/yukigoseikyokaishi.66.590. PMID 19648931.
  17. ^ Dickinson, Bryan C.; Leconte, Aaron M.; Allen, Benjamin; Esvelt, Kevin M.; Liu, David R. (2013-05-28). "Experimental interrogation of the path dependence and stochasticity of protein evolution using phage-assisted continuous evolution". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 110 (22): 9007–9012. Bibcode:2013PNAS..110.9007D. doi:10.1073/pnas.1220670110. ISSN 0027-8424. PMC 3670371. PMID 23674678.
  18. ^ Rees, Holly A.; Liu, David R. (December 2018). "Base editing: precision chemistry on the genome and transcriptome of living cells". Nature Reviews Genetics. 19 (12): 770–788. doi:10.1038/s41576-018-0059-1. ISSN 1471-0064. PMC 6535181. PMID 30323312.
  19. ^ "David R. Liu". Google Scholar. Retrieved 13 December 2022.
  20. ^ Brian Gormley, "Flagship Ventures Hatches Two More Health-Care Companies", The Wall Street Journal (March 17, 2011)
  21. ^ Keown, Alex (November 22, 2017). "Cambridge's Ensemble Therapeutics Quietly Shuts Down After 13 Years". BioSpace.
  22. ^ https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2005/06/chemist-card-shark-liu-takes-off/
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