2024 Harvard Chinese Life Science Distinguished Research Award名单新鲜出炉，恭喜以下十二位获奖者，公示时间为09月02日至09月12日。颁奖典礼将在09月14日哈佛华人生命科学年会（HCLS）学术论坛上举行。
获奖人员名单
获奖人员简介
Gang Du, M.D., Ph.D.
Current Position/Title: Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Affiliation: Program in Cellular and Molecular Medicine (PCMM), Boston Children's Hospital; Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology, Harvard University
Bio: Gang Du received his M.D. in Pharmacy in 2014 from Sun Yat-Sen University, and received his Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology in 2020 from Sun Yat-Sen University. During his Ph.D., Gang Du was supervised by Prof. Haiyang Chen on multiple projects on the mechanistic immunology. In his Ph.D. study, he discovered a new therapeutic avenue for the enhancement of mucosal healing (MH) in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) patients using a systematic approach by combining the technique of cell biology, immunology and electron microscopy (EM). After his Ph.D., he joined the lab of Dr. James Chou at Harvard Medical School who studies structural immunology in collaboration with the neighboring lab of Dr. Hao Wu at Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School. Under the supervision of Dr. Chou and Wu, He revealed a new strategy to achieve effective activation of the immune receptor DR5 by solving its autoinhibitory, preligand state structure using nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR). When Dr. Chou resigned from Harvard Medical School to go back to China, he Joined Dr. Wu‘s lab to continue his research on mechanistic and structural immunology. In Dr. Wu’s lab, he spearheaded the identification of a crucial lipid modification on the N-terminal domain of GSDMD (GSDMD-NT) that is required for pore formation and pyroptosis induction. He and his cooperators also identified small molecules that overcome GSDMD autoinhibition to activate GSDMD without cleavage in cancer cells, and the resulting pyroptosis promotes antitumor immunity as a single agent, and enhances the effect from anti-PD-1 in combination. Gang Du’s current research interests are focusing on cell death and anti-tumor immunity.
Highlighted Publication for 2023-2024 (*Equal contribution, #co-corresponding author):
Du G*#, Healy LB*, David L#, Walker C, El-Baba TJ, Lutomski CA, Goh B, Gu B, Pi X, Devant P, Fontana P, Dong Y, Ma X, Miao R, Balasubramanian A, Puthenveetil R, Banerjee A, Luo HR, Kagan JC, Oh SF, Robinson CV, Lieberman J, Wu H#. ROS-dependent S-palmitoylation activates cleaved and intact gasdermin D. Nature. 2024 Apr 10. doi: 10.1038/s41586-024-07373-5. PMID: 38599239.
Pietro Fontana*, Gang Du*, Ying Zhang*, Haiwei Zhang*, Setu M. Vora, Jun Jacob Hu, Ming Shi, Ahmet B. Tufan, Liam B. Healy, Shiyu Xia, Dian-Jang Lee, Zhouyihan Li, Pilar Baldominos Flores, Heng Ru, Hongbo R. Luo, Judith Agudo, Judy Lieberman#, Hao Wu#. Small-molecule GSDMD agonism in tumors stimulates antitumor immunity without toxicity. Cell, Accepted, (2024).
Erwei Li, Ph.D.
Current position/Title: Instructor in medicine
Affiliation: Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School
Bio: Dr. Erwei Li earned his bachelor’s degree from Sichuan University in 2012 and completed his Ph.D. in Molecular Medicine in 2018 at the School of Life Sciences, Tsinghua University. His doctoral research focused on the pathology of fatty liver disease and insulin resistance. Dr. Li is currently an Instructor in Medicine in Prof. Evan Rosen’s lab, where he investigates the role of oxytocin in adipose metabolism.
Highlighted publication for 2023-2024:
Erwei Li, Luhong Wang, Daqing Wang, Jingyi Chi, Zeran Lin, Gordon I. Smith, Samuel Klein, Paul Cohen, and Evan D. Rosen. "Control of lipolysis by a population of oxytocinergic sympathetic neurons." Nature 625, no. 7993 (2024): 175-180.
Yangyang Zhu, Ph.D.
Current Position/title: Postdoctoral fellow
Affiliation: Department of Immunology, Harvard Medical School
Bio: Dr. Yangyang Zhu earned her B.S. degree in Biology at Shandong University in 2014. She went on to earn her Ph.D. in Biology (Immunology direction) from Tsinghua University in 2019. Her Ph.D. work studied the role of E3 ligase VHL in follicular helper T cells and humoral responses under the supervision from Dr. Yun-Cai Liu. Currently, Dr. Zhu is a postdoctoral fellow in the CBDM Lab at Harvard Medical School, studying neuro-immune interactions in the gut. This involves the establishment of a chemogenetic-based neuronal activation system, by which she discovered that nociceptors regulate gut regulatory T cells via CGRP-Ramp1 axis, connecting pain signaling with Treg cells. Dr. Zhu commits to expand our understanding on gut neuro-immune crosstalk and shed light on IBD therapeutics.
Highlighted publications for 2023-2024 (* Co-first author, # Co-corresponding author):
Yangyang Zhu*, Kimberly Meerschaert*, Silvia Galvan-Pena, Na-Ryum Bin, Daping Yang, Himanish Basu, Ryo Kawamoto, Amre Shalaby, Stephen Liberles, Daine Mathis, Christophe Benoist# and Isaac Chiu# (2024). A chemogenetic screen reveals that Trpv1-expressing neurons control regulatory T cells in the gut. Science 385, eadk1679.
Silvia Galván-Peña, Yangyang Zhu, Bola S Hanna, Diane Mathis, Christophe Benoist (2024). A dynamic atlas of immunocyte migration from the gut. Sci Immunol 9, eadi0672.
Deepshika Ramanan, Alvin Pratama, Yangyang Zhu, Olivia Venezia, Martina Sassone-Corsi, Kaitavjeet Chowdhary, Silvia Galván-Peña, Esen Sefik, Chrysothemis Brown, Adélaïde Gélineau, Diane Mathis, Christophe Benoist (2023). T regulatory cells in the face of the intestinal microbiota. Nat Rev Immunol 23, 749-762.
Yongqiang Gao, Ph.D.
Current Position/Title: Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Affiliation: Department of Microbiology, Harvard Medical School
Bio: Yongqiang Gao received his Ph.D. in Microbiology at the University of Amsterdam, Netherlands, in 2019. During his Ph.D., he investigated the mechanism of bacterial cell division focused on the bacterium Bacillus subtilis which is surrounded by a cell wall, and a bacterium Acholeplasma laidlawii, which lacks a cell wall, and developed molecular biological tools to study A. laidlawii as a model organism for bacteria that lack a cell wall. Yongqiang joined Prof. David Rudner lab in 2019 as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow, and his current research interests are related to the mechanism of how stress- or antibiotic-resistance bacterial spores exit from dormancy, and trying to develop bacterial spore inhibitors that can effectively kill pathogenic bacteria in their dormant state and prevent them from germinating to form pathogens.
Highlighted Publication for 2023-2024 (*Equal contribution, #co-corresponding author):
Yongqiang Gao*, Jeremy D. Amon*, Lior Artzi*, Fernando H. Ramírez-Guadiana, Kelly P. Brock, Joshua C. Cofsky, Deborah S. Marks, Andrew C. Kruse, David Z. Rudner. Bacterial spore germination receptors are nutrient-gated ion channels. Science 380, 387-391, doi:10.1126/ science.adg9829 (2023).
Yongqiang Gao, Jeremy D. Amon, Anna P. Brogan, Lior Artzi, Fernando H. Ramírez-Guadiana, Joshua C. Cofsky, Andrew C. Kruse, David Z. Rudner. SpoVAF and FigP form an oligomeric ion channel that amplifies nutrient-triggered spore germination. Genes Dev 38, 31-45 (2024).
Yan Zeng, Lu Guo, Yongqiang Gao, Lingwei Cui, Mengmei Wang, Lu Huang, Mingyue Jiang, Ying Liu, Yaxin Zhu, Hua Xiang, De-Feng Li, Yanning Zheng. Formation of NifA-PII complex represses ammonium-sensitive nitrogen fixation in diazotrophic proteobacteria lacking NifL. Cell Rep 43(7):114476 (2024).
Zicong Zhang, Ph.D.
Current Position/Title: Instructor
Affiliation: F.M. Kirby Neurobiology Center, Boston Children’s Hospital; Harvard Medical School
Bio: Zicong Zhang received his bachelor's degree in basic medical sciences from Southern Medical University in 2010 and a PhD in neuroscience from the Hong Kong Polytechnic University in 2014. During his PhD program in Prof. Jufang He's lab, he studied neuropeptide-mediated neuroplasticity and memory formation in the rodent neocortex and acquired a strong background in electrophysiology. He joined Dr. Zhigang He’s lab at Boston Children’s Hospital as a postdoctoral fellow in 2015. His research focuses on dissecting the physiological functions of the descending spinal cord pathways and exploring the therapeutic strategies to promote neural regeneration and functional recovery after spinal cord injury.
Highlighted Publication for 2023-2024 (* Co-first author):
*Zhang Z, *Su J, Tang J, Chung L, Page JC, Winter CC, Liu Y, Kegeles E, Conti S, Zhang Y, Biundo B, Chalif JI, Hua CY, Yang Z, Yao X, Yang Y, Chen S, Schwab JM, Wang KH, Chen C, Prerau MJ, He Z. Spinal projecting neurons in rostral ventromedial medulla co-regulate motor and sympathetic tone. Cell. 2024 Jun 20: 187. PMID: 38733990.
Winter CC, Jacobi A, Su J, Chung L, van Velthoven C, Yao Z, Lee C, Zhang Z, Yu S, Gao K, Salazar GD, Kegeles E, Zhang Y, Tomihiro MC, Zhu J, Tang J, Song F, Donahue R, Kawaguchi R, Wang Q, Kunst M, Smith K, Liu Y, Tasic B, Zeng H, He Z. A transcriptomic taxonomy of mouse brain-wide spinal projecting neurons. Nature. 2023 Dec 14: 624. PMCID: PMC10719099.
Hongli Hu, Ph.D.
Current position: Instructor
Affiliation: Program in Cellular and Molecular Medicine at Boston Children's Hospital; Department of Pediatrics, Harvard Medical School
Bio: Hongli received his Ph.D. degree with Dr. Daming Gao from the Shanghai Institute of Biochemistry and Cell Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and studied cancer cell signaling pathways and cell metabolism. As a postdoctoral fellow with Dr. Frederick W. Alt at Boston Children’s Hospital, he widen his research focus on basic immunity study-V(D)J recombination in B cell development. Hongli is working on the mechanism study that explain fundament role of cohesin-mediated loop extrusion in heavy chain and light chain V(D)J recombination. His research aim is to explain the possible mechanisms that antibody heavy and light chain utilize to organize their gene segments together to produce various kinds of antibodies. His long-term goal is optimizing animal models and developing new immunotherapies. His study is award by Irvington Postdoc Fellowship from Cancer Research Institute (CRI).
Highlighted Publications for 2023-2024 (* co-first author, #co-corresponding author):
Zhang Y*, Li X*, Ba Z, Lou J, Gaertner K.E, Zhu T, Lin X, Ye Y, Alt F.W#, Hu H*#.Molecular basis for differential Igk versus Igh V(D)J joining mechanisms. Nature 2024
Wenxiang Zhang, Ph.D.
Current position/Title: Instructor in Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology
Affiliation: Boston Children’s Hospital / Harvard Medical School
Bio: Wenxiang graduated with a Bachelor's degree in Marine Life Sciences from Ocean University of China. He later joined the Lei Zhang lab at the Shanghai Institute of Biochemistry and Cell Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, where he conducted in-depth research on the Hippo signaling pathway. After earning his PhD, Wenxiang briefly worked in the industry and investment sectors before joining the Sun Hur lab at Boston Children’s Hospital / Harvard Medical School in 2019. There, he focused on the transcriptional regulatory mechanisms of adaptive immunity, discovering a novel DNA recognition and binding mode of the key transcription factor FOXP3 in Treg cells. He also uncovered new mechanisms by which FOXP3 regulates Treg cell function. Wenxiang was awarded the Jeffery Modell Award and YuHe Scholar. His research is dedicated to integrating oncology and immunology to study Treg functionality and transcriptional regulatory mechanisms within the immune system, with the goal of developing related therapeutic strategies.
Highlighted Publications for 2023-2024 (* co-first author, #co-corresponding author):
Wenxiang Zhang*, Fangwei Leng*, Xi Wang, Ricardo N. Ramirez, Jinseok Park, Christophe Benoist and Sun Hur. FOXP3 recognizes microsatellites and bridges DNA through multimerization[J]. Nature 624, 433–441 (2023).
• Highlighted in News & Views in the same issue of Nature.
• Featured in the Innovation, Elite News, Chemical Word and Evolution News & Science Today.
2. Juliette Leon, Kaitavjeet Chowdhary, Wenxiang Zhang, Ricardo N. Ramirez, Isabelle André, Sun Hur, Diane Mathis, and Christophe Benoist. Mutations from patients with IPEX ported to mice reveal different patterns of FoxP3 and Treg dysfunction[J]. Cell Reports, 2023, 42(8).
Zhen-Fei Xie, Ph.D.
Current position/Title: Research Scientist
Affiliation: The Ragon Institute of Massachusetts General Hospital, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University
Bio: Zhen-Fei received his B.S. in Biological Sciences from Sichuan Agricultural University in 2012, and then received his Ph.D. in Developmental Biology from Shanghai Institute of Biochemistry and Cell Biology in 2018. During his Ph.D., Zhen-Fei worked on mouse sperm-like cell—haploid embryonic stem cell mediated embryonic development and its application for rapid generation of genetically engineered mouse models with CRISPR-Cas9 under the supervision of Prof. Jin-Song Li. After completing his Ph.D. study, he joined Prof Yi Zhang lab of Boston Children’s Hospital in 2018 as a postdoctoral research fellow to work on the epigenetic reprogramming in cloned mouse development. After that, he shifted his focus and continued his scientific training in Immunology in Prof Facundo Batista lab of Ragon Institute as a postdoctoral research fellow in 2020 and was promoted as a research scientist in 2023. Currently, his research relates to vaccine studies against infectious disease, particularly on HIV with humanized mouse models.
Highlighted publication for 2023-2024 (*equal contribution):
Xie, Z*., Lin, Y.-C*., Steichen, J.M*., Ozorowski, G*., Kratochvil, S., Ray, R., Torres, J.L., Liguori, A., Kalyuzhniy, O., Wang, X., et al. (2024). mRNA-LNP HIV-1 trimer boosters elicit precursors to broad neutralizing antibodies. Science 384, eadk0582.
Meng Zhang, Ph.D.
Current Position/Title: Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Affiliation: Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Harvard University
Bio: Meng Zhang is currently a postdoctoral fellow in Prof. Xiaowei Zhuang’s lab, where her research focuses on the development of genomic-scale single-cell imaging methods and their applications in the mammalian brain. She earned her PhD in Biophysics from The Ohio State University, where she was supervised by Prof. Dongping Zhong and focused on studying ultrafast protein dynamics using femtosecond laser spectroscopy. Meng has a broad background in biophysics, with expertise in laser spectroscopy, fluorescence microscopy, and single-cell genomics. Recently, she generated the first spatially resolved and molecularly defined whole mouse brain cell atlas, identifying over 300 major cell types and 5,000 transcriptionally distinct cell clusters with high molecular and spatial resolution. This atlas revealed the enormous molecular diversity and spatial heterogeneity of cells in the brain and uncovered cell-type-specific cell-cell interactions, providing a foundational resource for future neuroscience research. She will start her own lab at Scripps Research in 2025, where her lab will develop experimental and analytical tools for spatial multi-omics to seek a mechanistic understanding of neuro-immune crosstalk under normal and pathological conditions.
Highlighted Publications for 2023-2024 (* co-first author, #co-corresponding author):
1. Meng Zhang*, Xingjie Pan*, Won Jung*, Aaron R. Halpern, Stephen W. Eichhorn, Zhiyun Lei, Limor Cohen, Kimberly A. Smith, Bosilijka Tasic, Zizhen Yao, Hongkui Zeng, Xiaowei Zhuang. Molecularly defined and spatially resolved cell atlas of the whole mouse brain. Nature 624, 343-354 (2023).
2. Zizhen Yao#, Cindy T. J. van Velthoven, Michael Kunst, Meng Zhang, Delissa McMillen, …, Hongkui Zeng#. A high-resolution transcriptomic and spatial atlas of cell types in the whole mouse brain. Nature 624, 317-332 (2023).
Chenhao Li, Ph.D.
Current Position/Title: Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Affiliation: Massachusetts General Hospital, Broad Institute
Bio: Chenhao received his Ph.D. in computer science from National University of Singapore, where he developed computational algorithms to study the ecology of human gut microbiome. He joined Dr. Ramnik Xavier’s lab at Massachusetts General Hospital in 2020. As a computational biologist, Chenhao is interested in a broad range of technical and biological questions, including developing methods for emerging sequencing technologies, characterizing the spatial organization of intestine cells, and understanding the spatial-temporal dynamics of the gut microbiome.
Highlighted Publications for 2023-2024 (* co-first author):
Chenhao Li*, Martin Stražar*, Ahmed MT Mohamed, Julian A Pacheco, Rebecca L Walker, Tina Lebar, Shijie Zhao, Julia Lockart, Andrea Dame, Kumar Thurimella, Sarah Jeanfavre, Eric M Brown, Qi Yan Ang, Brittany Berdy, Dallis Sergio, Rachele Invernizzi, Antonio Tinoco, Gleb Pishchany, Ramachandran S Vasan, Emily Balskus, Curtis Huttenhower, Hera Vlamakis, Clary Clish, Stanley Y Shaw, Damian R Plichta, Ramnik J. Xavier. Gut microbiome and metabolome profiling in Framingham Heart Study reveals cholesterol-metabolizing bacteria linked with lower cardiovascular risk. Cell. 2024.
Toru Nakata, Chenhao Li, Toufic Mayassi, Helen Lin, Koushik Ghosh, Åsa Segerstolpe, Emma L Diamond, Paula Herbst, Tommaso Biancalani, Shreya Gaddam, Saurabh Parkar, Ziqing Lu, Alok Jaiswal, Bihua Li, Elizabeth A Creasey, Ariel Lefkovith, Mark J Daly, Daniel B Graham, Ramnik J. Xavier. Genetic vulnerability to healing reveals a spatially resolved epithelial restitution program. Science Translational Medicine. 2023.
Rui Miao, Ph.D.
Current Position/Title: Instructor
Affiliation: Harvard Medical School/ Boston Children’s Hospital
Bio: Rui received her Ph.D. in Genetics and Cell Biology from the National Institute of Biological Sciences, Beijing (NIBS), where she studied the regulation and function of lysosomes in C. elegans, mentored by Prof. Xiaochen Wang. Then she joined Prof. Judy Lieberman Lab as a postdoc fellow in 2020. Rui’s research interest is understanding the subcellular and molecular basis of inflammatory cell death (pyroptosis), with the long-term goal to develop novel strategies to manipulate pyroptosis-induced inflammation for the treatment of human diseases. Her work has been supported by the Cancer Research Institute Postdoc Fellowship. She was promoted to Instructor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School in February 2024.
Highlighted Publication for 2023-2024 (*co-first author; #co-corresponding author):
Rui Miao*#, Cong Jiang*, Winston Y Chang*, Haiwei Zhang, Jinsu An, Felicia Ho, Pengcheng Chen, Han Zhang, Caroline Junqueira, Dulguun Amgalan, Felix G Liang, Junbing Zhang, Charles L Evavold, Iva Hafner- Bratkovič, Zhibin Zhang, Pietro Fontana, Shiyu Xia, Markus Waldeck-Weiermair, Youdong Pan, Thomas Michel, Liron Bar-Peled, Hao Wu, Jonathan C Kagan, Richard N Kitsis, Peng Zhang, Xing Liu, Judy Lieberman. Gasdermin D permeabilization of mitochondrial inner and outer membranes accelerates and enhances pyroptosis. Immunity. 2023 Oct 31:S1074-7613(23)00444-2. doi: 10.1016/j.immuni.2023.10.004. (Cover story)
Wei Shi, Ph.D.
Current Position/Title: Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Affiliation: Division of Molecular Medicine, Boston Children's Hospital/Harvard Medical School
Bio: Wei received his B.S. from Nanjing University in 2007, and then received his Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology in 2018 from Wuhan Institute of Virology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, advised by Dr. Peng Gong, focusing on understanding the mechanism of viral genome replication and the structure and function of viral RNA-dependent RNA polymerase. He is a postdoctoral research fellow in Prof. Bing Chen’s lab, and his current interests are exploring the structure and mechanism of viral membrane fusion by viral fusion proteins, such as spike protein of SARS-CoV-2.
Highlighted Publications for 2023-2024 (* co-first author, #co-corresponding author):
Shi W*, Cai Y, Zhu H, Peng H, Voyer J, Rits-Volloch S, Cao H, Mayer ML, Song K, Xu C, Lu J, Zhang J*#, Chen B#. Cryo-EM structure of SARS-CoV-2 postfusion spike in membrane. Nature. 2023 Jul;619(7969):403-409.
Kibria MG, Lavine CL, Tang W, Wang S, Gao H, Shi W, Zhu H, Voyer J, Rits-Volloch S, Keerti, Bi C, Peng H, Wesemann DR, Lu J, Xie H, Seaman MS, Chen B. Antibody-mediated SARS-CoV-2 entry in cultured cells. EMBO Rep. 2023 Dec 6;24(12):e57724.
撰稿：黄 冠
编辑：王明超
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