Dr. Chen is a Scientific Founder and member of the Scientific Advisory Board of Salubritas Therapeutics, Inc. Zheng-Yi Chen, D.Phil. is Associate Professor of Otolaryngology, Head and Neck Surgery, Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts Eye & Ear Infirmary. His research interests include understanding the causes and underlying mechanisms of noise-induced hearing loss (NIHL) and age-related hearing loss (ARHL), and developing technologies and therapeutics using regeneration, gene editing, and gene therapy. His laboratory uncovered that overexpression of ISL1 in hair cells results in protection from both NIHL and ARHL in mice by conferring resistance to apoptotic cell death.
One of the most common causes of hearing loss is the loss of sensory hair cells in the inner ear that receive and transmit sound and sense balance. Regeneration of these hair cells in the adult mammalian inner ear has been the most challenging obstacle to overcome in the treatment of hearing loss. Dr. Chen’s laboratory has taken a functional genomics approach to systematically study gene expression patterns during mouse inner ear development and noise-induced hearing loss in adult mice. His research has led to the discovery that Myc and Notch can reprogram the inner ear supporting cells for regeneration, and demonstrated for the first time, that drug-like molecules induce hair cell regeneration in adult mammals (PNAS 2023).
Dr. Chen’s laboratory also has a long-standing interest in genetic disorders. His laboratory has been involved in identifying and characterizing several deafness-related genes. Although more than 150 deafness-related genes have been identified, no FDA- approved therapy is currently available. Dr. Chen’s lab has pioneered applying the CRISPR/Cas9-mediated genome editing technology to treat genetic hearing loss in mouse models and contributed to the development of AAV-mediated gene therapy for hearing loss in mice. Dr. Chen’s lab also developed technology to deliver RNPs (ribonucleoproteins) into the mammalian inner ear in vivo and demonstrated that RNP-mediated delivery of CRISPR/Cas9 and gRNA can rescue hearing defects in a mouse model of human genetic hearing loss. Recently, his lab contributed to the first successful clinical study of gene therapy of children with OTOF gene mutations and severe hearing loss (Lancet 2024)
Dr. Chen is a recipient of numerous awards including Research Leaders of Scientific American 50 and Pfizer/AFAR Innovations in Aging Research Program. He obtained his DPhil. from Oxford University and was a postdoctoral fellow at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School.