Biography

EDUCATION AND APPOINTMENTS

2018- Professor, Medical Research Institute, Wuhan University, China

2015-2018, Senior Scientist, Group Lead of HDR in HSC, CRISPR Therapeutics Inc.

2012-2015, Postdoctoral fellow, Dept. of Genetics, Harvard Medical School

2006-2012, Ph.D. in Cell, Stem Cell, and Developmental Biology, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus

2002-2006, B.S. in Biology, Nankai University, Tianjin, China

Overview

Dr. Zhang received a Ph.D. in Cell Biology, Stem Cells, and Development from University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus (2012). She continued with post-doctoral work in Harvard Medical School (2012-2015). Prior to joining Wuhan University, Ying worked in CRISPR Therapeutics as the first scientist where she worked on the CRISPR-edited hematopoietic stem cells for treating hemoglobinopathies (2015-2018).

Since 2018, she has been a professor at the Medical Research Institute and Frontier Science Center for Immunology and Metabolism at Wuhan University. Her research mainly focuses on developing new CRISPR-Cas tools and applying the new tools in primary cells for cell therapy. She has discovered a new Cas9 where editing activity can be robustly regulated by DNA topology (Mol. Cell, 2022) and has developed a robust non-viral DNA delivery method which significant improved CAR-T generation (Nat. Biomed. Engin., 2023). She participated in the development of first CRISPR-Cas9 drug by engineering hematopoietic stem cell for treating β-thalassemia. In order to improve the efficacy and safety, she developed a base editor based engineering of BCL11A binding motif to treat β-thalassemia (Cell Stem Cell, 2023).

Research

Our ultimate goal is to translate CRISPR technologies into cell therapy by either directly restoring pathogenic mutations within cells or by manipulating immune cell to enhance its anti-tumor ability for cancer treatment. We aim to build and engineer a complete suite of toolbox for cellular genome manipulation that can be safely delivered into primary cells for precision medicine.

Area of interest:

1. CRISPR/Cas9 toolbox discovery and engineering;

2. Non-viral delivery of macromolecules for cell therapy

3.CRISPR/Cas9 mediated cell therapy including immunotherapies and genetic disorders;

Representative  Publications

1. W Han#, HY Qiu#, S Sun#, ZC Fu#, GQ Wang#, X Qian, L Wang, X Zhai, J Wei, Y Wang, YL Guo, GH Cao, RJ Ji, YZ Zhang, H Ma, H Wang, M Zhao, J Wu, L Bi, QB Chen, Z Li, L Yu, X Mou, H Yin, L Yang *, J Chen *, B Yang *, Y Zhang *. Base editing of the HBG promoter induces potent fetal hemoglobin expression with no detectable offtarget mutations in human HSCs. Cell Stem Cell, 30,1-16, Dec 7th, 2023

2. J An #, CP Zhang#, HY Qiu#, HX Zhang#, QB Chen, YM Zhang, XL Lei, CX Zhang, H Yin*, Y Zhang*. Enhancement of the viability of T cells electroporated with DNA via osmotic dampening of the DNA-sensing cGAS-STING pathway. Nature Biomedical Engineering, July 27, 2023

3. CP Zhang, HY Qiu, CX Zhang, YM Zhang, YZ Zhang, H Yin, KQ Zhang*, Y Zhang*. Efficient non-viral delivery of macromolecules in human primary hematopoietic stem cells and lymphocytes. Journal of Molecular and Cell Biology, 2023 Aug 3;15(3)

4. HX Zhang#, CX Zhang#, SH Lu, XH Tong, K Zhang, H Yin*, Y Zhang*. Cas12a-based one-pot SNP detection with high accuracy. Cell Insight, (2023): 100080. doi.org/10.1016/j.cellin.2023.100080

5. HY Qiu, RJ Ji, Y Zhang*. Current advances of CRISPR-Cas technology in cell therapy. Cell Insight, (2022): 100067 doi.org/10.1016/j.cellin.2022.100067

6. YJ Shi#, M Duan#, JM Ding#, FQ Wang, LL Bi, CX Zhang, YZ Zhang, JY Duan, AH Huang, XL Lei, H Yin, Y Zhang*. DNA topology regulates PAM-Cas9 interaction and DNA unwinding to enable near PAMless cleavage by thermophilic Cas9. Molecular Cell, Nov 3;82(21):4160-4175, 2022

7. SH Lu#, XH Tong#, Y Han#, K Zhang, YZ Zhang, QB Chen, JY Duan, XL Lei, MH Huang, Y Qiu, DY Zhang, X Zhou, Y Zhang* and Hao Yin*. Fast and sensitive detection of SARS-CoV-2 RNA using suboptimal protospacer adjacent motifs for Cas12a. Nature Biomedical Engineering, 2022 Mar;6(3):286-297, 2022