Principal Investigator Feng Zhang
Project Website http://zlab.mit.edu/index.html
The Zhang lab at MIT & Broad explores and studies biological diversity to understand nature and discover systems and processes that may be harnessed through bioengineering for the improvement of human well-being.
Areas of Interest & Open Challenges include:
(*) Developing Programmable Therapeutics -- Can we accelerate the development of new therapeutics? We aim to create modular systems that interchangeably combine a therapeutic molecule, such as a gene editing construct, and a delivery vehicle. By focusing on creating compatible and extensible platforms for both intervention and delivery, we can rapidly generate a large number of therapeutics tailored for a wide range of contexts.
(*) Restoring Cellular Homeostatis -- Can we modulate cell state without changing cell fate? The goal is to identify approaches that we can use to tune cell state. These approaches will provide a new therapeutic avenue for treating conditions that don’t have a defined genetic cause, like injury, degenerative diseases, and even aging.
(*) Discovering Natural Systems -- Can we uncover new biology by mining natural diversity? We are interested in advancing our understanding of molecular mechanisms, cellular functions, and even organismal biology through the discovery of natural systems. We use computational and experimental approaches to find and characterize new systems.
The lab uses a variety of approaches to achieve our goals, and we continually adopt new ones to accelerate the work.