Ping Zhang

Emerging evidence suggests that human genetic variation underlying disease susceptibility plays a critical role in drug response variability through its regulatory effect on the transcription of target gene. However, there are challenges in harnessing of susceptibility loci for target identification and therapeutic application, including limitations in (i) exposition of causal variants within susceptibility loci, (ii) understanding of the context specificity, and (iii) mechanistic insights into their influence on cellular behaviours and clinical outcomes.

My current research is focused on systematic prioritisation and characterisation of genetic variation to understand the regulation of acute immune response, endotoxin tolerance; the interplay of innate-adaptive immunity; and development of experimental and computational approaches to uncover epigenetic features, gene sets and mediators involving immune tolerance, and compounds modulating epigenetic state that have potential as novel therapeutics. The research combines epigenomic profiling, eQTL mapping and CRISPR-based epigenetic editing to study variation in disease relevant primary immune cells and human iPSC-derived models.