Haohao Dong, a researcher and doctoral supervisor at the National Key Laboratory of Biotherapy, West China Hospital, Sichuan University, is a national-level talent recruited from overseas, the chief scientist of the National Key R&D Program for Young Talents, and a recipient of the Sichuan Province Outstanding Youth Award. He obtained his Ph.D. from the University of St Andrews, UK, in 2015, and conducted postdoctoral research at the University of East Anglia, UK, from 2015 to 2017. In 2017, he was appointed as a researcher at the National Key Laboratory of Biotherapy, Sichuan University.His research group is dedicated to the mechanistic study of novel targets in pathogenic Gram-negative bacteria (superdrug-resistant bacteria), elucidating the structures of critical target proteins involved in the formation of Gram-negative bacterial outer membranes. This includes the transport machinery for lipopolysaccharides, phospholipids, lipoproteins, and the folding machinery for outer membrane barrel proteins, revealing their molecular mechanisms. These findings provide molecular guidance for the development of new antibiotics and bacterial vaccines.
His work has been published as the corresponding or first author in prestigious journals such as Nature (2014, 2016, 2023), Nature Structural & Molecular Biology (2020, 2021), Nature Communications (2017, 2019), PNAS (2023), and Cell Discovery (2024).He leads several major projects, including the National Science and Technology Ministry's "14th Five-Year Plan" Key R&D Program for Young Scientists, grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China, and the Sichuan Province High-level Talent Program. Additionally, he serves as a young editorial board member for the journal Hlife and as a reviewer for several journals including Science, Nature Communications, Plos Biology, Journal of Molecular Biology, and Communications Biology.
Xiaodi Tang, is a researcher and doctoral supervisor at the National Key Laboratory of Biotherapy, West China Hospital, Sichuan University. She is recognized as a young talent under Sichuan Province's "Tianfu Emei Plan." She obtained her bachelor's and Ph.D. degrees from Imperial College London, UK, in 2008 and 2015, respectively, and conducted postdoctoral research at the University of Oxford, UK, from 2015 to 2018. In 2018, she joined the National Key Laboratory of Biotherapy at Sichuan University full-time, focusing primarily on the molecular mechanisms of pathogen-targeted proteins, including the functional mechanisms of proteins related to bacterial proliferation, host infection and immunity, and bacterial biofilm synthesis.Combining structural biology, she establishes liposome systems to simulate the biological environment of membrane protein complexes, revealing molecular mechanisms and potential drug targets, thereby providing molecular models for drug screening.
Tang has published her research as the first or corresponding author in top-tier journals, including Nature (2023), Cell Discovery (2024), Nature Structural and Molecular Biology (2021; 2020), Nature Communications (2019; 2017), Signal Transduction and Targeted Therapy (STTT), and Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases (2018). She holds two national invention patents.Currently, she leads and participates in three national-level projects, including one project from the National Natural Science Foundation of China as the principal investigator, one National Science Fund for Young Scientists as the principal investigator, and one as a participant in the Ministry of Science and Technology's "14th Five-Year Plan" project on biomolecules and microbiomes. Additionally, she serves as a young editorial board member for the journal Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology and as a guest reviewer for Nature Communications.
