San Francisco Chronicle - July 30, 2006
Sabin Russell at srussell@sfchronicle.com.

"I met him in 1987, when he was in his late 20s," recalls renowned UCSF virologist Dr. Jay Levy. "I was convinced he was going to go places, and he has."

Today, Shao is director of virology and immunology at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, and a chief scientist in HIV prevention and control for the world's most populous nation.

"He could easily get a job in this country, but he is very loyal to China and very dedicated to the HIV-research effort," said Levy, who was among the first in the world to isolate the virus that causes AIDS.

In his modest office on the sixth floor of the China CDC, Shao recalled his first extended visit to Levy's lab, where he studied HIV cell culture as part of a project with the World Health Organization to monitor variation in the ever-evolving virus.

"My trip was complicated by the earthquake in 1989," he recalled. "It was delayed for a week."

The two scientists developed a warm friendship, and over the last five years have run an exchange program where Chinese students work at UCSF and American students spent time at Shao's Beijing laboratory. He keeps in his office a copy of Levy's book, "HIV and the Pathogenesis of AIDS," newly translated into Chinese. "This," he said, "is the Bible of HIV research."

Levy said the high caliber of Chinese AIDS research is one of the strengths of the country's newly energized effort to combat the epidemic. "The resources may not be there yet, but it has taken a turn that is going to be very positive for China," he said.

Shao's lab played a central role in the decision this year to roll back the official estimate of HIV infections in the country, to 650,000 from 840,000 -- as a result of sophisticated studies of viral strains isolated from patients who recently tested positive.

An increase in HIV-antibody testing in China had been producing alarming results -- a sharp rise in positives suggestive of a rapidly expanding epidemic. Shao is an expert in decoding the "molecular clock" that marks the duration of HIV infection by tracking a predictable rate of mutations. His lab found that 80 percent of the newly diagnosed cases were among people infected 10 years earlier -- old infections newly discovered.

Infection rates that appeared to be increasing by 50 percent a year in some places were in fact, according to Shao, an artifact of more widespread testing uncovering old, undetected cases.

By American standards, Shao concedes that his laboratory does not have state-of-the-art hardware. "It compares to an upper-middle-level U.S. laboratory," he said.

The CDC building itself looks shopworn and far older than its 12 years. But resting on Shao's desk is the emblem of the new China -- an architect's drawing of the vast new CDC campus that the government is building 15 miles outside Beijing. A complex of 23 buildings, it will house a laboratory for Shao in a single structure three times the size of the current CDC headquarters. "We move in early next year," Shao said.

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