Our body has special immune cells called T cells that fight tumors. On the surface of T cells is a protein called TCR, which recognizes a small special marker (antigen) on the surface of tumor cells. Once it detects the marker, the T cell launches an attack to eliminate the tumor.However, many tumors escape detection by altering, reducing, or completely removing this marker, making it hard for T c...

Metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease/steatohepatitis (MASLD/MASH) has become the most common chronic liver disease worldwide. Due to increasing obesity and metabolic problems, more than 30% of people globally have varying degrees of fatty liver disease. Current approved drugs mainly include resmetirom and semaglutide, but these are limited in number, expensive, and have restric...

On February 11, a research team led by Ge Jingpeng from the School of Life Science and Technology (SLST) at ShanghaiTech University and Yu Jie from the Interdisciplinary Research Center on Biology and Chemistry (IRCBC) at the Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry published a study in Nature entitled “Conformational diversity and fully opening mechanism of native NMDA receptor.” ...

Targeted protein degradation (TPD) approaches represent a breakthrough in drug development. Unlike traditional occupancy-driven inhibitors, TPD exploits the ubiquitin-proteasome system (UPS) to eliminate disease-causing proteins that were previously considered “undruggable.” Currently, several TPD drugs have shown clinical potential in treating many diseases. However, with extended treatment, pa...

On December 23, Assistant Professor Xi Ying’s lab at the School of Life Science and Technology (SLST), in collaboration with Prof. Ren Tao from Shanghai Sixth People’s Hospital and Prof. Zhao Jincun from Guangzhou Medical University/Guangzhou Laboratory, published a paper entitled “Dysplastic epithelial repair promotes the tissue-residence of lymphocytes to inhibit alveolar regeneration post vi...

On December 12, Assistant Professor Xiang Yangfei’s lab at the School of Life Science and Technology (SLST) published a paper entitled “Human PSC-derived organoids model sympathetic ganglion development and its functional crosstalk with the heart” in the journal Cell Stem Cell. For the first time, this study reports the successful generation of human sympathetic ganglion organoids (hSGOs) from ...

Recently, a research team led by Professor Xu Wenqing from the School of Life Science and Technology (SLST) at ShanghaiTech, in collaboration with other researchers, published a significant study in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). The paper, titled “De novo design of protein binders to stabilize monomeric TDP-43 and inhibit its pathological aggre...

Translated and edited from the article originally reported by China Science Daily.Recalling the story about her university time when she asked to skip a required English course so she could listen to a signal processing course offered by the computer science department, Bai Fang—now an associate professor at the School of Life Science and Technology and assistant director of the Shanghai Inst...

A research team led by Assistant Professor Yang Bei at the School of Life Science and Technology (SLST) and Shanghai Institute for Advanced Immunochemical Studies (SIAIS) and Professor Chen Jia at SLST, ShanghaiTech University, has achieved a significantprogress in mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) editing. Their study, published in Molecular Cell, revealed the first structural snapshots of...

At the SensUs 2025 Competition held in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, at the end of August, the MakeSense team from ShanghaiTech, in its first-ever participation, delivered a stunning performance. Competing against top-tier global teams, MakeSense clinched the Analytical Performance Award (Global Champion) and the Innovation Award (Global Runner-Up), while also earning the SensUs Gold Medal...

High cholesterol is a major risk factor for atherosclerosis, heart disease, and stroke. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), over 4.4 million people die annually from cardiovascular diseases linked to high cholesterol, posing a significant public health challenge. Understanding how the body regulates cholesterol levels is crucial for disease prevention and drug development. Sterol Reg...

Imagine a world where a child born deaf can hear their parents’ voices for the first time. This vision is closer to reality thanks to a groundbreaking discovery by researchers at iHuman Institute, ShanghaiTech University. Led by Associate Professor Zhong Guisheng, the team has developed a technology called ARBITER (AAV Reporter-Based in vivo Transcriptional Enhancer Reconstruction), which ha...

Heterochromatin is a tightly packed form of DNA essential for maintaining genome stability, regulating gene expression, and ensuring proper chromosome segregation during cell division. Despite its importance, the molecular mechanisms underlying heterochromatin formation remain incompletely understood. In eukaryotic cells, heterochromatin is marked by specific histone modifications, such as methyla...

Mitochondria, the “powerhouses” of cells, play a vital role in adenosine triphosphate (ATP) production. Mitochondria possess their own independent DNA, termed mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), which encodes genes essential for mitochondrial function. Compared to nuclear DNA, mtDNA is more prone to mutations due to reactive oxygen species generated during oxidative phosphorylation. Most mtDNA mutations ...