Nucleic acids science plays a key role in precision medicine, genetic therapy and new solutions for human health. Continuous discovery of new RNA functions and constant emergence of innovative nucleic acids technologies are driving forces for the field and hold enormous promise for the future scientific and technological progress. The China Nucleic Acids Forum (CNAF) led by Nobel Prize winners is an international forum at the forefront of these developments, aims to push forward communications and collaborations in and abroad, and has been successfully held times since 2013. The CNAF has attracted high-profile speakers, including Nobel Prize winners, to highlight recent advances in nucleic-acid based medicine, scientific discoveries, diagnostics and industrial trends. It has been widely recognized as the premier forum in Asia for advancing nucleic acids research and drug development. The 2018 CNAF featured 20+ globally prominent experts discussing the latest advances in nucleic acids research and development.

1. RNA and Diseases
2. RNA-based Therapeutics
3. Nucleic Acids Vaccines

Dr. Mello’s lab uses the nematode C. elegans as a model system to study embryogenesis and gene silencing. His collaborative work with Dr. Andrew Fire led to the discovery of RNA interference (RNAi), for which they shared the 2006 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Together they showed that when C. elegans is exposed to double-stranded ribonucleic acid (dsRNA), a molecule that mimics a signature of viral infection, the worm mounts a sequence-specific silencing reaction that interferes with the expression of cognate cellular RNAs. Using readily produced short synthetic dsRNAs, researchers can now silence any gene inorganisms as diverse as rice and humans. RNAi allows researchers to rapidly “knock out” the expression of specific genes and, thus, to define thebiological functions of those genes. RNAi also provides a potential therapeutic avenue to silence genes that cause or contribute to diseases.Dr. Mello received his BS degree in Biochemistry from Brown University in 1982, and PhD from Harvard University in 1990. From 1990 to 1994, he conducted postdoctoral research at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, WA. Now Dr. Mello is an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Blais University Chair in Molecular Medicine and Co-director of the RNA Therapeutics Institute at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.Besides the Nobel Prize, Dr. Mello’s work was recognized with numerous awards and honors, including the National Academy of Sciences Molecular Biology Award (2003), the Wiley Prize in Biomedical Sciences from Rockefeller University (2003), Brandeis University’s Lewis S. Rosnstiel Award for Distinguished Work in Medical Research (2005), the Gairdner Foundation International Award (2005), the Massry Prize (2005), the Paul Ehrlich and Ludwig Darmstaedter Award (2006), the Dr. Paul Janssen Award for Biomedical Research (2006), the Hope Funds Award of Excellence in Basic Research (2008). He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society.

Prof. Oded Rechavi’s mission is to challenge fundamental long-held scientific dogmas. He found an exception to the original “Cell Theory”, provided direct evidence that an acquired trait can be inherited in nematodes, worked to elucidate an alternative transgenerational inheritance mechanism (that depends on inherited small RNA molecules, not DNA molecules), discovered a mechanism that allows nematodes’ brains to control the behavior of their progeny, utilized genome sequencing of ancient DNA to “piece together” fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls, discovered a neuronal circuit-level mechanism that explains economic irrationality, and demonstrated that parasites can be genetically engineered to deliver drugs to the nervous system. Prof. Rechavi is an ERC Fellow, and was awarded many prestigious prizes, including the Polymath prize (Schmidt Futures), the Kadar award, the Blavatnik award, the Krill Wolf award, the Alon, and F.I.R.S.T (Bikura) Prizes, and the Gross Lipper Fellowship. Prof. Rechavi was selected as one of the “10 Most Creative People in Israel Under 40”, and one of the “40 Most Promising People in Israel Under 40”.

In the early 1990s, Dr. Fu co-discovered and provided initial characterization of SR proteins from mammals, a family of conserved RNA-binding proteins involved in various aspects of mRNA production and function, including pre-mRNA splicing, mRNA export, nonsense-mediated decay and translation. His lab was then the first to identify a family of kinases specific for SR proteins, and demonstrated that these kinases are critical for transducing external and intracellular signals to regulate alternative pre-mRNA splicing in the nucleus. More recently, the research scope of Dr. Fu’s group has been expanded to understanding the mechanistic coupling between transcription and splicing, the nuclear architectural basis for regulated gene expression, and the genomics of RNA binding proteins.

Dr. Fu received his M.S. degree in Virology from Wuhan University, China in 1982, Ph.D. degree in Biochemistry from Case Western Reserve University in 1988 and post-doctoral training with Prof. Tom Maniatis at Harvard from 1988 to 1992. In 1992, Dr. Fu joined the faculty of University of California San Diego, where he currently is a Professor of Cellular and Molecular Medicine at the Institute of Genomic Medicine.

Dr. Fu’s scientific achievements have been recognized by selection for the Searle Scholar Award in 1994 and the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society Scholar Award in 1997. In 2010, he was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)

Dr. Muthiah (Mano) Manoharan serves as a Senior Vice President, Scientific Advisory Board Member, and a Distinguished Research Scientist at Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. In 2003, he was the first chemist hired at Alnylam. He and his team pioneered the discovery and development of the chemical modifications that make RNA interference-based human therapeutics possible. This  work led to ONPATTRO (Patisiran), the first RNAi therapeutic approved by FDA in 2018.  Dr. Manoharan has had a distinguished career as a world-leading chemist in the areas of oligonucleotide chemical modifications, conjugation chemistry, and delivery platforms (lipid nanoparticles, polymer conjugates, and complex-forming strategies). Dr. Manoharan and his research group demonstrated for the first time the human therapeutic applications of GalNAc-conjugated oligonucleotides at Alnylam, a platform that has revolutionized the nucleic acid-based therapeutics field with several compounds in the advanced clinical trials.  He is an author of more than 215 publications (nearly 43,000 citations with an h-index of 94 and an i10-index of 367) and over 400 abstracts, as well as an inventor of over 225 issued U.S. patents.  Prior to Alnylam, Dr. Manoharan worked at Ionis (formerly Isis) Pharmaceuticals and Lifecodes Corporation in the field of antisense oligonucleotide therapeutics. He received the M. L. Wolfrom Award from the American Chemical Society Carbohydrate Chemistry Division in 2007 for his contributions to this field. He has been recognized as the Lifetime Achievement Awardee of the Oligonucleotide Therapeutics Society for the year 2019.

Dan Peer is a Professor and the Director of the Laboratory of Precision NanoMedicine at Tel Aviv University (TAU). He is also the Vice President for Research and Development at Tel Aviv University, the biggest research university in Israel. From 2016 – 2020, he was the Chair of Tel Aviv University Cancer Biology Research Center that includes 17 affiliated hospitals and from 2017 – Present, he is the Founding and Managing Director of the SPARK program of Translational Medicine at TAU.

Prof. Peer’s work was among the first to demonstrate systemic delivery of RNA molecules using targeted nanocarriers to the immune system and he pioneered the use of RNA interference (RNAi) in immune cells. In addition, his lab was the first to show systemic, cell specific delivery of modified mRNA to cells to induce therapeutic gene expression of desired proteins within the immune system that has enormous implications in cancer, inflammation and infection diseases (e.g. COVID 19 mRNA vaccines). In addition, his lab was the first to show high efficiency, cell specific therapeutic genome editing in cancer. Prof. Peer has more than 130 pending and granted patents. Some of them have been licensed to several pharmaceutical companies and one is currently under registration (as a new biological drug in Inflammatory Bowel Disease). In addition, based on his work, five spin-off companies were generated aiming to bring innovative personalized medicine into clinical practice.

Prof. Peer received more than 30 awards and honors and he serves on the scientific advisory board of more than 15 companies, and on the editorial board of more than 20 journals. He is also an Associate Editor of the Journal of Controlled Release. Prof. Peer is a past President of the Israeli Chapter of the Controlled Release Society, and a Past Member of the Board of the Israel Young Academy.

Wensheng Wei received his bachelor degree in Biochemistry from Peking University, Ph.D. in Genetics from Michigan State University. After postdoctoral training and working as a research associate at Stanford University School of Medicine, Dr. Wei became a principle investigator in the School of Life Sciences at Peking University from 2007. He is now a professor of Biomedical Pioneering Innovation Center (BIOPIC), Beijing Advanced Innovation Center for Genomics (ICG), Peking-Tsinghua Center for Life Sciences (CLS), State Key Laboratory of Protein and Plant Gene Research, and School of Life Sciences at Peking University. The research of Wei group is mainly focused on the development of eukaryotic gene editing tools, with the emphasis on the high-throughput functional genomics and gene therapy. The combination of forward and reverse genetic means are employed, often in a high-throughput fashion, for the understanding of the molecular mechanisms underlying human diseases, including cancer and infection.

Dr. Lu started his biopharmaceutical industry career in 1993 as a lab head in Novartis and was the co-founder and Executive VP of Intradigm Corporation (2001-2006). Patrick has authored more than 50 scientific papers, review articles and book chapters, and is an inventor for more than 50 issued and pending patents. He has been an invited speaker in many international conferences throughout the world and received a number of Government grants. Under his leadership, Sirnaomics has raised more than US$170 million dollars and has developed a series of “first-in-class” siRNA therapeutic candidates at different phases of clinical studies, for treatment of cancer and fibrosis diseases, in both USA and China.

Dr. Marraffini received his undergraduate degree from the University of Rosario in Argentina in 1998 and his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 2007, studying bacterial pathogenesis in the laboratory of Dr. Olaf Schneewind. He was a postdoc at Northwestern University from 2008 to 2010 with Dr. Erik Sontheimer, where he pioneered studies on CRISPR-Cas immunity. Dr. Marraffini determined that that CRISPR-Cas systems target DNA molecules in a sequence-specific manner, a study that was key to understand the mechanisms of CRISPR immunity at the molecular level. This finding also predicted the existence of RNA-programmable Cas nucleases and their applications. In 2010 he joined the faculty of Rockefeller University. He received the 2015 Earl and Thressa Stadtman Scholar Award from the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, the 2015 Hans Sigrist Prize from the University of Bern, a 2017 NIH Pioneer Award and the 2017 Albany Medical Center Prize in Medicine. He became an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in 2018 and was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2019.

Dr. Bin Wang is a distinguished professor at Department of Medical Microbiology and Parasitology, Fudan University School of Basic Medical Sciences. He is also a co-founder of Advaccine Biotech in China. His research area is to focus on the development of DNA vaccines against various diseases, including the SARS-CoV2, therapeutics and novel vaccine adjuvants. Those developments are achieved into several ongoing clinical trials, including a COVID 19 vaccine, an RSV vaccine, and an HBV therapeutic vaccine.

He received his B.A. in biology from Shandong University in 1982 and his Ph.D. from the Cincinnati Children Hospital at University of Cincinnati School of Medicine in 1990. He completed his postdoc training in virology and immunology at the Wistar Institute 1992. He became an instructor and then assistant professor at University of Pennsylvania Medical School in the period of 1993 to 1998. He was a professor and served as the Chairman at Department of Microbiology and Immunology for 6 years at College of Biological Sciences, China Agricultural University before he joined to Fudan University. He was one of very early DNA vaccine technology inventors in 90’s and performed the first-in human DNA vaccine trials in 1994-1996. He has published over 150 peer-review articles and awarded 35 US and 22 Chinese patents. He serves as editorial board members for several international journals and executive members in number of scientific societies.

Dr. Zicai Liang is currently the Chairman and CEO of Suzhou Ribo Life Science Co. Ltd. He received his doctoral degree from Uppsala University, Sweden and postdoctoral training at Yale University, USA. He has taken faculty positions from assistant Professor to tenured Professor at Karolinska Institutet or Peking University on the subject of biotechnology with a research focus on siRNA, ncRNA and antisense ASO. He founded Ribo Life Science in 2007. Ribo is the leading RNA therapeutics company in China, with its head quarter located in the suburban of Shanghai and a research center located in Beijing. The company has established a vertically-integrated siRNA/ASO technology platform and an extensive pipeline of RNA targeting drugs. Ribo nurtured the first cross-continental collaborations between Chinese and US companies in the siRNA/ASO sub-sector, and has filed the first siRNA and first ASO clinical trials in China.

Dr. Adrian R. Krainer is the St. Giles Foundation Professor at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and Deputy Director of Research at the CSHL Cancer Center. He received a Ph.D. in Biochemistry from Harvard University in 1986, working with Prof. Tom Maniatis on pre-mRNA splicing mechanisms. He continued his research on splicing as a Cold Spring Harbor Fellow, mentored by Dr. Richard J. Roberts, and joined the faculty at Cold Spring Harbor in 1989. In addition to studying splicing regulation, his laboratory is engaged in the development of mechanism-based targeted therapies to correct or modulate alternative splicing in genetic diseases and cancer. This work has resulted to date in 218 publications and seven issued patents. In collaboration with Ionis Pharmaceuticals and Biogen, Dr. Krainer’s laboratory developed nusinersen (Spinraza), which corrects the splicing defect in the SMN2 gene and became the first approved therapy for spinal muscular atrophy. Dr. Krainer is a co-founder, Director, and Chair of the SAB of Stoke Therapeutics. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine, the National Academy of Inventors, and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Recent awards include the 2019 Life Sciences Breakthrough Prize, the 2019 Lifetime Achievement Award of the RNA Society, the 2019 International Prize for Translational Neuroscience, the 2019 Speiser Award in Pharmaceutical Sciences, the 2020 Ross Prize in Molecular Medicine, and the 2020 Takeda & NYAS Innovators in Science Senior Scientist Award in Rare Diseases.

Laura Sepp-Lorenzino oversees all drug research across in vivo and ex vivo (engineered cell therapy) areas as Intellia’s Chief Scientific Officer. Prior to Intellia, she was vice president, Head of Nucleic Acid Therapies, Research, and member of the External Innovation team at Vertex Pharmaceuticals, Inc. Laura previously was vice president, entrepreneur-in-residence at Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a leader in the development of RNAi Therapeutics. At Alnylam, she was responsible for the Hepatic Infectious Disease Strategic Therapeutic Area, championed extra hepatic siRNA delivery, and was active in licensing and partnering.

Before joining Alnylam, Laura spent 14 years at Merck & Co., most recently having served as executive director and department head, RNA Therapeutics Discovery Biology. In this role, she was responsible for identification and optimization of siRNAs and delivery vehicles, advancement of preclinical candidates, and development of an siRNA-conjugate platform to expand the repertoire of tissues accessible to in vivo siRNA delivery. Laura also has expertise in oncology drug discovery and development acquired earlier in her career by leading the Cancer Research Department at Merck West Point and working as an assistant lab member and assistant attending molecular biologist at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.

She received her professional degree in biochemistry from the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina and both her master’s degree and doctorate in biochemistry from New York University. Laura holds professional affiliations with key scientific organizations, including the Oligonucleotide Therapeutics Society, the American Society for Gene and Cell Therapy, the European Society of Gene and Cell Therapy, and the New York Academy of Sciences, as well as a number of oncology societies.

Roy Parker is an Investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute; Executive Director, BioFrontiers Institute; Cech-Leinwand Endowed Chair of Biochemistry and Distinguished Professor at the University of Colorado Boulder. He has a joint appointment with the Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California, San Francisco and completed his Postdoctoral work at the University of Massachusetts, Worcester. His research focuses on the biogenesis, translation, and degradation of eukaryotic mRNA and how cells regulate different steps in this process to modulate gene expression. He has served on, and chaired, the NIH CDF-1 study section, and co-organized the Nucleic Acids Gordon Conference (1997), the RNA Processing Meeting at CSHL (2001), and the 2004 FASEB Conference on Post-Transcriptional Control (2004). He is, or has been, on the editorial boards of MCB, Science, Cell, RNA, Nucleic Acids Research, and is an editor of the Journal of Cell Biology and eLife. He was the President of the RNA Society (2010). He is an elected Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences (2010) and Member of the National Academy of Sciences (2012).

Anna holds a PhD in Biochemistry at Lund University and joined AstraZeneca in 2001. Before joining AZ Anna spent time at a small biotech in Copenhagen, ALK with antigen production for immunization of humans and one of the world leading technology institutes, VTT in Helsinki, Finland with large scale protein production in collaboration with Genencore, US.  Anna has held a number of increasingly senior positions at AstraZeneca within Therapy Areas early science units, spanning from early discovery to late development and life cycle management. Anna is in the last 5 years involved in the mRNA project in collaboration with Moderna where she currently is the project lead for the novel project utilizing mRNA encoding for VEGF for cardiac regeneration.

Prof. Zhenjun Yang (PhD) was born and raised in Jilin province, China. He received his B.S. degree and Ph.D. degree in pharmaceutical chemistry from Beijing Medical University in 1987 and 1998. He worked as a postdoctoral research fellow at college of pharmacy in University of Georgia in 2000-2002. From 2002, he is working as an associate professor and a professor (2008), Director of Nucleic Acid Research Group, in State Key Laboratory of Natural and Biomimetic Drugs, School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Peking University. His principal research directions include: 1. Encapsulation and modification of antisense oligonucleotides, aptamers and siRNAs; 2. Techniques based on aptamers for disease detection; 3. Chemical biology research of cyclic dinucleotides; 4. Nucleoside antiviral drugs. He is the committee member of Chemical Biology Division, also Chemical Education Division, in Chinese Chemical Society.

Biliang Zhang received his M.S. in Organic Chemistry from Fordham University in 1990, Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry with Prof. Ronald Breslow at Columbia University in 1995, and conducted his post-doctoral training with Prof. Thomas Cech at University of Colorado Boulder. In 1998 Dr. Zhang became an Assistant Professor of the Program in Molecular Medicine at University of Massachusetts Medical School. In 2004 he accepted a Principal Investigator role at the Guangzhou Institute of Biomedicine and Health of Chinese Academy of Sciences, where he currently holds a Professor position. Using diverse biological and chemical methodologies, Dr. Zhang’ s lab studies the roles of RNA molecules in living cells. His particular interests are in the fields of non-coding RNAs, nucleic acid syn thetic biology and therapeutics. In 2004, Dr. Zhang established Guangzhou RiboBio Co., Ltd.