Dr. Ling-juan Zhang

Dr. Ling-juan Zhang

Professor
School of Pharmaceutical Science
Xiamen University
BioGRAPHY

Dr. Ling-juan Zhang is a full professor at the state key lab of cellular stress biology, school of Pharmaceutical Science, Xiamen University. She received her Ph.D. in Pharmacology at Oregon State University and post-graduate training at the Department of Dermatology at the University of California, San Diego, where she continued as a Project Scientist and directed an NIH RO1 project before coming back to China. Dr. Zhang’s research focuses on the innate immune mechanisms of skin host defense against bacterial infection as well as pathogenesis inflammatory skin diseases such as psoriasis. Her ground-breaking research discovered the innate immune antimicrobial function of dermal fat and her research findings have been in prestigious journals including Science (2015), Immunity (2016 and 2019), and Science Translational Medicine (2021) with more than 2600 citations. Dr. Zhang has received several Chinese National and Fujian Province Young talent awards, and she has also been elected as a board member of prestigious societies including Chinese society of Skin Immunology, Chinese society of Investigative Dermatology and Society of Chinese Medicine Immunology Branch.

Speaker's Schedule

Dec 20, 2022
16:50 - 17:10
Hangzhou Talk #11
Discovering the innate immune antimicrobial function of dermal fat
Dermal white adipose tissue (dWAT) is a unique layer consisting of adipocytes and their highly heterogeneous progenitors within the skin dermis. We have found that dWAT plays a critical role in skin defense against invasive Staphylococcus aureus infection by producing antimicrobial peptides, a process termed as “dermal reactive adipogenesis”. And an age- and/or diet- dependent activation of the TGFβ-TGFBR-SMAD2/3 pathway abolished dermal reactive adipogenesis, leading to increased infection risk in aged and/or obese mice. Together, our findings have unraveled the previously unrecognized innate immune functions and regulatory mechanism of dWAT.
VIEW HANGZHOU PROGRAM