New Mouse Models for the Study of Age-Dependent Disease

Prof. Bin Zhou earned his M.D. from Zhejiang University School of Medicine (2002) and Ph.D. from Peking Union Medical College (2006). He conducted postdoctoral research at Boston Children's Hospital and Harvard Medical School (2006–2010) and then returned to the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Shanghai. His research focuses on deciphering cell origin and fate plasticity during organ development, tissue regeneration, and diseases. He develops orthogonal recombinase-based and proximity-dependent genetic technologies for high-precision, high-resolution lineage tracing and functional study. Using these approaches, he has uncovered cell origin and fate plasticity in the regeneration of multiple organs, including the heart, liver, and lung. Dr. Zhou has received numerous honors, including the Outstanding Investigator Award (International Society for Heart Research), the Outstanding Achievement Award (Chinese Society for Cell Biology), the China Youth Science and Technology Award, the Explorer Prize, and the New Cornerstone Investigator.

Prof. Joseph Miano is the J. Harold Harrison, MD, Distinguished University Chair in Vascular Biology at the Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University. Prof. Miano was an Associate Editor of ATVB, a Consulting Editor of Circulation Research, and is currently the Editor-in-Chief of Vascular Pharmacology.  He has published more than 150 peer-reviewed papers, delivered more than 200 invited lectures, and has been funded by the NIH, AHA, and philanthropic foundations.  His awards include the Martha Lucas Pate PhD Memorial Award, the Manitowoc Heart-A-Rama Research for Life Award, and the ATVB Special Recognition Award in Vascular Biology.  The Miano Lab focuses on developing genetically engineered mice. His lab was the first to apply CRISPR and prime editing to interrogate regulatory control elements in the mouse genome.  In recent years, his lab developed a new Itga8-CreERT2 mouse for vascular smooth muscle cell-restricted knockouts, a humanized ACE2 model for study of Long COVID, and an inducible Lmod1 knockout mouse that shows rapid onset atherosclerosis.