The Meng lab has made many important seminal contributions to the study of hepatitis E virus (HEV), including discovery of the first animal hepatitis E virus, swine HEV from pigs, which led to the eventual recognition of hepatitis E as a zoonotic disease, discovery of avian HEV from chickens with he... Read more

The Meng lab has made many important seminal contributions to the study of hepatitis E virus (HEV), including discovery of the first animal hepatitis E virus, swine HEV from pigs, which led to the eventual recognition of hepatitis E as a zoonotic disease, discovery of avian HEV from chickens with hepatitis-splenomegaly syndrome in the United States, first demonstration of experimental cross-species HEV infection, establishment of a pig model and a chicken model for HEV, development of genotypes 1, 3 and 4 HEV and avian HEV infectious clones and replicons, and development of a unique chronic hepatitis E model in pigs. The Meng lab has conducted extensive structural and functional studies of HEV genes, cross-species infection, HEV immunology and vaccine studies, mechanism of HEV-associated extrahepatic disease manifestations, and HEV pathogenesis studies using HEV reverse genetic systems and animal models. The Meng lab currently focuses on understanding the underlying mechanisms of HEV pathogenesis, particularly cross-species HEV transmission and extrahepatic manifestations of HEV-associated diseases such as HEV-associated high mortality during pregnancy, chronic infection, and neurological diseases.