VietNamNet Bridge - Refusing jobs offered by US large bio-tech laboratories after finishing her post-doc program at Illinois University, Associate Professor Dr Le Thi Ly decided to return to Vietnam to ‘do something right in her homeland’.

Just five years after returning, Ly has set up a strong research team in bioinformatics at the Biology Technology Faculty of the International University, a member of the HCM City National University.

The teams conduct research works on the evolution of A-type influenza viruses and the proteins relating to the II-type diabetes for drug development.  

Ly has had published 30 times in international publications in prestigious journals Plos Computational Biology, PloSONE, Biology Direct, Medicinal Chemistry Research and Molecules. She has been invited by Nature to work as a critic and by Current Pharmaceutical Design to work as an editor for research in the same field. 

Ly said one of the themes she spent time and effort on the most was one on the research and development of drugs to treat A-type influenza funded by NAFOSTED which was conducted at the peak of the influenza epidemic outbreak.

Ly has detected characteristics of the structure and evolution of H1N1, H5N1, H7N9 and H3N2 complications for development-oriented drugs and vaccines. 

The research results have been cited by many scientists who study influenza.

However, she regrets that the important discoveries still cannot be applied in reality. 

“A long way is still ahead. It will take a lot of money to develop commercial products. It will be necessary to expand the preclinical studies and conduct a pilot production,” she said.

Vietnam has abundant herbal material sources and scientists with deep knowledge about herbal medicine. However, as the connection between scientists and businesses remains weak, the country still cannot execute the .

Therefore, Ly said, in the future that Ly and her co-workers will cooperate closely with businesses when implementing scientific research.

Ly also spends her time on university education.

Open-hearted and willing to encourage personal ideas, Ly provided many interesting topics for her research team to follow. 

With her guidance, five members have had articles published in ISI journals as the first authors and have opportunities to receive a scholarship for doctoral training courses at renowned universities, such as Cornell University in the US, Paris XI University in France, Melbourne University in Australia and SISSAI in Italy.

One of them has been accepted to enter a doctoral course after obtaining a bachelor’s degree thanks to many articles published in ISI.

Nguyen Van Hung, a member of the team, had three articles published in ISI journals this year.

Tia Sang