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Home > Healthcare Professionals > Research Awards > Researcher Profiles > Dr. Lee Peng

Lee F. Peng, MD, PhD

2008 American Liver Foundation Liver Scholar. The General Hospital Corporation d/b/a Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts. "Discovery, Design and Characterization of Modulators of Hepatitis C Virus Replication."


Dr. Lee Peng, MD, PhD

Viruses like the hepatitis C virus (HCV) reproduce by infecting human liver cells and making them produce copies of the virus, essentially turning them into virus "factories." One way to fight viral infection is to stop this process of replication, but existing drugs that do this have a relatively low success rate and often cause intolerable side effects.

Dr. Peng’s study aims to use the principles of chemical biology to uncover novel antiviral compounds that may lead to more effective HCV treatments. Chemical biology is a discipline that applies chemical techniques and tools to the study and manipulation of biological systems. Dr. Peng and his colleagues have developed a technique for testing a wide range of small organic molecules (SOMs) efficiently to see if they affect HCV replication. Using this technique, they have already found a number of SOMs that slow down HCV replication and may have stronger antiviral effects than current treatments.

Through this current study, Dr. Peng hopes to obtain more data on how these newly discovered "hit compounds" act against HCV. His study will examine the molecular structure of these compounds to find out how exactly they work, so that even more effective versions of the compounds can be designed and developed. Moreover, the study is expected to yield more basic knowledge about HCV replication that can be applied not just to refining these specific hit compounds but also beyond.

Page updated: December 16th, 2008