TAbS Talk: Developing programmable protein systems to decipher and rewire cancer and immunity
Join us as we host a webinar on our 2025 Huston Award Winner Xin Zhou’s work: Developing programmable protein systems to decipher and rewire cancer and immunity. Please find the abstract for the talk and Xin’s bio below.
Abstract:
The cell surface is a central hub of biological processes, transducing information from the cell’s surroundings to enable dynamic and specific responses to their local environment. Myriad human diseases result from the dysregulation of extracellular and membrane signal perception and regulation. Our research bridges the disciplines of biomolecular engineering, chemical biology, and high-throughput biochemistry to understand how different cell signaling components are precisely regulated at the cell surface and coordinated in space and time to achieve functional specificity, and how these processes are altered in diseases. By studying cancer and immune cells through a protein engineering and synthetic biology lens, our research facilitates the construction of precise spatiotemporal maps of cell signaling pathways in living cells, and establishes new pharmacological methods for therapeutic control of cell function and fate.
Bio:
Dr. Xin Zhou is an Assistant Professor of Cancer Biology at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology at Harvard Medical School. She is a chemical biologist whose research focuses on protein engineering, cell signaling, and cancer biology. Her lab develops new technologies to control and reprogram membrane protein trafficking, degradation, and drug delivery, and engineers molecular sensors and recording tools to study cell signaling and interactions in living systems. Her recent work has led to the development of the TransTAC platform for antibody-mediated targeted membrane protein degradation, synthetic PD-1 signaling and CAR-T rewiring technologies, and mechanistic discovery of how the bispecific VEGF/PD-1 antibody Ivonescimab functions. Dr. Zhou received her PhD in Bioengineering from Stanford and completed postdoctoral training at UCSF. Her work has been recognized with competitive grants and awards such as the NIH Director’s DP2 New Innovator Award, the Damon Runyon–Rachleff Innovation Award, the Yosemite-American Cancer Society Award, the V Foundation Women Scientists Innovation Award, and the James S. Huston Antibody Science Talent Award.
