On April 22, 2025, Professor WANG Wei from the College of Pharmacy at Chongqing Medical University, in collaboration with multiple institutions including ShanghaiTech University, Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Tsinghua University, and Wuhan Institute of Virology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, jointly published a latest research achievement titled "Substrate recognition and cleavage mechanism of the monkeypox protease, Core protease" in Nature.
Since the outbreak of the epidemic in May 2022, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has twice triggered its highest-level alert, categorising the monkeypox epidemic as a "Public Health Emergency of International Concern" (PHEIC). However, preventive and therapeutic options for monkeypox virus infections remain extremely limited. Therefore, discovering and validating novel drug targets against orthopoxviruses, as well as developing potent antiviral inhibitors, holds significant importance.
The research team successfully expressed and purified an active core protease of the monkeypox virus, resolved its high-resolution three-dimensional structure, and investigated the substrate recognition and catalytic mechanism of the viral core protease.
These research outcomes not only provide entirely new scientific evidence and potential therapeutic approaches for the prevention and treatment of the current monkeypox virus but also offer forward-looking solutions to address future public health security threats potentially caused by orthopoxviruses, showcasing broad application prospects.
Professor WANG Wei, an associate researcher at the College of Pharmacy, Chongqing Medical University, and a master's degree supervisor. He has been engaged in long-term research on important viruses such as HIV and monkeypox virus. He has presided over numerous national and provincial projects, including those funded by the National Natural Science Foundation. He has published 25 papers in journals such as Nature, Nature Communications, PNAS, and Protein & Cell. He has filed for 5 Chinese invention patents. He was awarded as a high-level talent of Chongqing Municipality (Category IV) and serves as a reviewer for several academic journals including Genes & Diseases, as well as a guest editor for Biomolecules.
(Translated by AI)
