Jiayu Liao

Dr. Jiayu (Jerry) Liao joined University of California of Riverside as a founding faculty of Bioengineering Department in 2006, where he has been involved in the establishment and development of both the undergraduate (B.S.) and the graduate programs (Ph.D. and M.S.) (BIG-Bioengineering Interdepartmental Graduate) programs in 2007. He has established a novel FRET technology platform for both biochemical and pharmacological parameter determinations in solution and high-throughput screening for drug discovery. Jerry graduated as B.S. from Peking University with the major of Biochemistry. He received his PhD in Biological Chemistry from the University of California at Los Angeles. He did his post-doc. training at the Scripps Research Institute. After he finished his post-doc. training, he joined GNF as Principle Investigator and Founding Scientist of GPCR platform at GNF. The HTS led by Jerry and subsequent characterizations of EDG1 receptor agonist has generated high impact publications and new immunosuppressant drug, Gilenya, on market from Novartis, which sale reached $2.3 billion in 2014. This work has been awarded as the Scripps Molecular Screening Center from two rounds of support from NIH roadmap (Score No.1 in whole US and total over $90 million). His discovery of new scaffold of EDG1-specific small molecule agonist led to the major drug program in Receptos which was acquired by Celgene with $7.2 billion in 2015.