Jian Liu (born December 20, 1962) is a John & Deborah S. McNeill, Jr. Distinguished Professor at the

UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy The UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy is located at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and includes a satellite campus at UNC Asheville. The Asheville School of Pharmacy campus opened in 2011, and graduated its first class in 2015. ' ...

, at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is also a founder and the chief scientific officer at Glycan Therapeutics.

Academic career

Education

Jian Liu received his bachelor's degree in chemistry and master's degree in biochemistry from

Nankai University Nankai University (NKU or Nankai; ) is a national public research university located in Tianjin, China. It is a prestigious Chinese state Class A Double First Class University approved by the central government of China, and a member of the fo ...

. He then moved to the University of Iowa in 1988 to obtain his PhD training in medicinal chemistry. After his PhD studies, he joined the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a postdoctoral fellow in 1993.

Academic Work

Jian Liu started his independent scientific career as an assistant professor in chemical biology and medicinal chemistry at the University of North Carolina in 2000 and moved to the rank of full professor in 2012. His research interest is in the interface of chemistry and biology of

heparin Heparin, also known as unfractionated heparin (UFH), is a medication and naturally occurring glycosaminoglycan. Since heparins depend on the activity of antithrombin, they are considered anticoagulants. Specifically it is also used in the treatm ...

and heparan sulfate. His work covers the understanding of the biosynthetic mechanism of heparan sulfate biosynthesis and the development of heparan sulfate-based medicines. In his work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the early period of his independent career at the University of North Carolina, he isolated the heparan sulfate 3-O-sulfotransferases that are key enzymes responsible for the biosynthesis of heparan sulfate with anticoagulant activity. He then led a research team to discover a chemoenzymatic method to prepare synthetic heparin, a drug to treat blood clotting disorders. He is also engaged in discovering new therapeutic potential of heparan sulfate and chondroitin sulfate through exploiting the anti-inflammatory effects of these molecules. His research team recently announced that a synthetic heparan sulfate 18-mer protects against acute liver injury caused by acetaminophen overdose. The team also discovered that a synthetic chondroitin sulfate E 19-mer attenuates multi-organ damage in endotoxemia mice.Li J, Sparkenbaugh E, Su G, Zhang F, Xu Y, Xia K, et al. Enzymatic synthesis of chondroitin sulfate E to attenuate bacteria lipopolysaccharide-induced organ failure. ACS Central Sci. 2020;6:1199-207. Jian Liu also participated in the effort organized by the US FDA and US Pharmacopeia to define the purity standards for heparin drugs. He served as a member of Unfractionated Heparins Ad Hoc Advisory Panel for US Pharmacopeia from 2010 to 2012.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Liu, Jian American pharmacologists Living people Pharmaceutical scientists University of North Carolina School of Medicine faculty Nankai University alumni University of Iowa alumni Chinese expatriate academics in the United States Chinese pharmacologists 1962 births