Shao Feng won the Zhongguancun Award for Outstanding Contribution

Beijing News Express (reporter Zhang Lu) The plenary meeting of the Zhongguancun Forum was held today (September 25). The reporter learned from the meeting that Shao Feng, a senior researcher at the Beijing Institute of Life Sciences, was awarded the highest award in Beijing Science and Technology - the Zhongguancun Award for Outstanding Contributions.

Shao Feng has made outstanding work in the fields of pathogenic virulence mechanism, antibacterial natural immunity, cytochromia and tumor immunity, opening up a new direction for the study of inflammatory cell necrosis, and providing new ideas for the research and development of tumor immunotherapy drugs.

From chemistry to biology, I hope to contribute to human health

In 1996, Shao Feng graduated from the Department of Technical Physics of Peking University with a major in applied chemistry. Deciding to do scientific research, he left chemistry and switched to biology. In his speech at peking university graduation ceremony in 2016, he confronted the graduates of his alma mater and explained the choices made 20 years ago.

He said that as human beings, the nature of our life activities and our pursuit of health must be eternal, but we know very little about it. "So I decided that biomedicine should give me more space than chemistry to do important and impactful research... The original naïve ideas and judgments that were close to the essence of things largely determined my achievements in biological research. ”

After graduating from university, Shao Feng went to the Institute of Biophysics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences to study biophysics and protein structure, and during his doctoral studies at the University of Michigan, he turned to biochemistry and cell biology. In 2005, Shao Feng came to the Beijing Institute of Life Sciences from Harvard Medical School. At that time, there was no boom in returning from studying abroad, but he felt that doing the same scientific research must be a greater contribution to the soil of his own country.

Shao Feng said his research trajectory is getting closer and closer to practical problems in biology and medicine. "I am willing to choose my own research direction from the perspective of solving human health problems."

It was revealed that cytofocal death can enhance the effect of tumor treatment

After returning to China, Shao Feng set up a laboratory at the Beijing Institute of Life Sciences, and initially focused on the "invasion" of bacteria — how bacteria infect and destroy host defenses. Despite his successful research, he made the decision in 2007 to turn to the body's "war of aggression" and explore the molecular mechanisms of the human immune system against bacteria. He believes that natural immunity research is more helpful in solving real medical clinical problems.

A shift in the direction of scientific research means a breakthrough, courage and pressure. Four years later, in 2011, Shao's team finally found the first receptor molecule in the cell, the bacterial flagellum protein that recognizes it. In 2014, they discovered two new receptors — sensory proteins that target endotoxins and another class of bacterial exotoxins. In 2015, they discovered the key protein downstream of these receptors that promotes inflammatory necrosis of cells, opening up new avenues for the clinical treatment of sepsis.

In 2020, Shao Feng's research group reported in Science that the granulase A secreted by toxic lymphocytes can directly cleave and activate gasdermin B protein, inducing target cells to undergo scorch death. Activation of this pathway can significantly promote immune clearance of tumors in mice.

Cytokewal is a new programmed cell death method that has been confirmed and widely concerned in recent years, manifested by the continuous expansion of cells until the cell membrane ruptures, resulting in the release of cell contents and then activating a strong inflammatory response. Between 2014 and 2017, research by Shao Feng's research group redefined the concept of scorched death. The 2018 Cell Death Naming Committee revised scorch death to: a regulated cell necrosis that relies on gasdermin (GSDM) family proteins to form plasma membrane pores, sometimes but not always completed by activation of inflammatory Caspase.

Shao Feng said that GSDM family protein-mediated cytokewal has provided new ideas for the development of tumor immunotherapy drugs, and GSDM family proteins have also become biomarkers of potential tumor immunotherapy, and agonists of such proteins are likely to become a new direction for the development of anti-tumor drugs.

Shao Feng said that the relationship between basic scientific research, medical research and disease treatment, simply put, is to discover the mechanism of disease through research, to discover potential new drug targets, and there is a large downstream industry that can convert research findings into products and drugs. "It's like we're providing them with a basis upstream, such as we've found a potential role for an immune pathway in mouse models, and biotech companies and drug development companies can use these scientific findings to develop small molecule drugs or antibody drugs to help humans treat diseases."

Beijing News reporter Zhang Lu

Trainee Editor Liu Qianxian Proofreader Liu Jun