NTU’s public forum on “The Mouse Model in the Human Hepatitis B Infection:New System of Immunocompetence and Cure” was held last week on November 17^th at the NTU Alumni Association. Panelists and experts attended the forum and exchanged their ideas and findings.

At present there are about 350 million to 400 million people in the world who are infected with chronic hepatitis B. In Taiwan, about 15% of the adult population are carriers of hepatitis B viruses. After the government implemented universal vaccine inoculation, 1% of children are still found to be carrying hepatitis B viruses. The success or failure in establishing a proper mouse model for Hepatitis B research is critical to the cure of this disease in the future.

Miss Huang Li-Rung(黃麗蓉), doctoral candidate at the Microbiology Research Institute of NTU, was the first person in the world to establish the mouse model for the tolerance of human hepatitis B virus infection. Her thesis was published in the November 9^th issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (USA). During the panel discussion, Dean of the Medical College, Dr. Ding- Shinn Chen pointed out that creating new knowledge is a prerequisite to becoming a first-rate university. This remarkable achievement in medical research will be applied clinically to the treatment of hepatitis patients.