Chau-Ting Yeh (Chang Gung Memorial Hospital/University, Taiwan) is a hepatologist with 435 indexed works and ~11,900 citations (h-index 55), with sustained output across nearly four decades and a notable recent acceleration (45 papers in 2023) . His most-cited contributions are longitudinal clinical studies defining natural history and treatment response in chronic hepatitis B, including long-term outcomes after spontaneous HBeAg seroconversion (706 citations, Hepatology) and characterization of YMDD-motif mutant emergence and clearance during lamivudine therapy (512 and 217 citations) .
Yeh's first-author molecular studies show genuine novelty but variable evidentiary strength. A pre-S2 G149R mutation associated with spontaneous HBsAg seroclearance was identified in 9 of 26 sequenced patients; site-directed mutagenesis in Huh-7 cells showed the mutation did not impair HBsAg secretion, supporting an immune-selection mechanism, though the observational design cannot prove causality . His NV-F/HnFV work claimed detection of 90-95 nm virus-like particles in all 7 tissue NV-F antigen-positive biopsies and none of 28 negatives, with convalescent seroconversion in 4/7 patients; notably, the authors themselves reported that immunogold labeling failed and that NV-F DNA could not be confirmed as the virion genome β a commendable example of transparent negative reporting . This remains a small-sample, unreplicated discovery claim. His translational cancer work includes mechanistic reviews on HSP60-survivin compartmentalization proposing a testable death-stimulus shuttling model .
Strengths: sustained high-impact clinical virology, first-author molecular virology, and transparent disclosure of failed confirmatory experiments. Limitations: several discovery claims (HnFV, G149R-seroclearance) rest on small samples (n=7-34 subgroups), single-center Taiwanese cohorts limiting generalizability, and remain without independent replication per available records. The very recent publication surge (2023-2026) with declining per-paper citations may reflect volume-over-selectivity pressure; the HSP60-survivin review explicitly relies on heterogeneous, context-dependent prior studies. Overall, Yeh is a credible, experienced clinician-scientist whose core HBV clinical work is strong, whose novel-agent discoveries are promising but epistemically incomplete, and whose recent output warrants scrutiny for quality control.
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