Feng Yao - Associated with a HSV Vaccine In Development

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I'm trying to find more on Feng Yao, a PhD who works at the Brigham Women's Hospital, and HSV vaccine he has been working on.  I have a feeling I've seen his name before but I can't quite place it.

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Research Narrative:

Feng Yao is an Associate Professor of Surgery at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School. He received his Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from Louisiana State University Medical Center and did his post.doc training in the Laboratory of Tumor Virus Genetics, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Medical School. He joined the Department of Surgery at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in 1995. He is the sole inventor of 6 issued U.S. or National Patents and 2 pending U.S. Patent Applications. The tetracycline gene switch technology that he invented, trademarked as T-REx by Invitrogen/Life Technologies is the most powerful repression-based transcription switch discovered in mammalian cells. The T-REx technology has been used and cited in more than 3500 publications and hundreds of patent applications covering various fields, including therapeutic protein and antibody productions in mammalian cells and drug screening. Using this gene switch technology, Dr. Yao has established several unique approaches for genetic engineering novel recombinant viruses for clinical applications in the fields of infectious diseases, cancers, and neural regeneration.

 

Dr. Yao’s lab is currently focusing on developing and testing:

1. Non-replicating dominant-negative HSV-2 recombinant virus-based vaccines against herpes simplex virus type 2 genital infections and disease.
2. Regulatable oncolytic HSV-1-based therapeutic approaches against human cancer.
3. Live-attenuated and regulatable HSV-1 vector technology for immunization and cancer immunotherapy.

T-REx TECHNOLOGY T-REx^TM is the tetracycline-regulatable gene switch technology developed by Dr. Feng Yao at BWH (U.S. Patent 5,972,650, National Patent). T-REx is the most powerful repression-based transcription switches discovered in mammalian cells to date. The technology uses the tetracycline repressor, tetR, itself, (rather than the previously used tetR-mammalian cell transcription factor fusion derivatives) to function as a potent repressor of gene expression from the tet operator–containing human cytomegalovirus (hCMV) major immediate-early promoter, while preserving its natural promoter activity. Because the ability of tetR to associate with its operator is abolished in the presence of tetracycline, this tetR-mediated repression of gene expression is de-repressed in the presence of tetracycline (Tet-On). Therefore, T-REx can be used to regulate gene expression in cell biology, molecular virology, and gene therapy. The applications of this technology includes drug screening, therapeutic protein and antibody production, therapeutic vector production, and development of a novel class of dominant-negative and replication-defective recombinant viruses as viral vaccine against infectious disease, regulatable oncolytic viruses for tumor therapy, and various types of viral vectors for cancer vaccine.

I have found a few papers he's done showing promise for a HSV vaccine.

https://dash.harvard.edu/handle/1/4875085

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4076306/

http://researchfaculty.brighamandwomens.org/BRIProfile.aspx?id=668

He's also applied (and I think granted) a patent here http://www.freepatentsonline.com/y2015/0337319.html.  Looks like it something to do with the proteins ICP0 and ICP4