Dr. Yubin Zhou is a tenured Professor, Presidential Impact Fellow, and Associate Director of the Center for Translational Cancer Research at the Institute of Biosciences and Technology, Texas A&M University. Dr. Zhou is also a primary faculty member in the Department of Translational Medical Sciences, and the Department of Medical Physiology (joint) in the College of Medicine, Texas A&M University. Dr. Zhou received his medical training/internship in internal medicine (1998-2003), and earned his Ph.D. in Chemistry and Virology (2008) from Georgia State University. He thereafter received his postdoctoral training in immunology at Harvard Medical School (2008-2010) and then worked as an instructor at La Jolla Institute for Immunology/UCSD (2010-2012). Dr. Zhou was the recipient of the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS) Fellow Award, LLS Special Fellow Award, the Translational Research Program Award from LLS, the TAMU Research Excellence Award, The Innovative Research in Cancer Nanotechnology Award from NCI, the ACS Research Scholar Award, Protégé member the Texas Academy of Medicine, Engineering, Science & Technology (TAMEST), and elected AIMBE Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE). He also served as an Associate Editor for Current Molecular Medicine, and Pharmaceutical Science Advances and sits on the editorial boards of Molecular and Cellular Biology, Chronic Diseases & Translational Medicine, and Clinical and Translational Medicine. He also co-edited a book entitled "Opsin-free Optogenetics: Technology and Applications".
At Texas A&M University, Dr. Zhou spearheads a bioengineering and synthetic immunology lab focused on developing technologies that enable remote and programmable control of protein activity, cell physiology, and designer cells to benefit both basic and translational research. A tight integration among mechanistic studies, biomedical engineering, and translational sciences is a hallmark of Dr. Zhou’s research program (10+ patent applications and commercial licensing to biotech/pharma). Dr. Zhou has published over 160 publications in high impact journals (Nature Methods, Nature Nanotechnology, Nature Cell Biology, Nature Chemical Biology, Nature Genetics, Nature Aging, Nature Structural & Molecular Biology, Nature Communications, Science Advances, Molecular Cell, Cell Chemical Biology, Advanced Science, JACS etc.) with ~23,000 citations (among Stanford’s world's most-cited scientists list 2022). His work has been featured in over a dozen journal covers and also highlighted by multiple media outlets. He has also been invited to contribute to multiple authoritative reviews in the most discerning and well-respected journals, including Nature Reviews Bioengineering, Annual Review of Physiology, Physiological Reviews, Trends in Biotechnology, Trends in Genetics, Current Opinion in Biotechnology, Current Opinion in Physiology, and Seminars in Cancer Research. His research has been supported by over a dozen grants from the National Institutes of Health, the Welch Foundation, the John S. Dun Foundation, the Cancer Prevention & Research Institute of Texas, the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, and the American Cancer Society.
Dr. Zhou's lab has developed light-switchable calcium channels and their modulators (Nature Cell Biology 2015 & 2024; Nature Communications 2015, 2020 & 2021; eLife 2015; Angew Chem 2018; JACS 2020; Advanced Science 2021) and intelligent cell-based immunotherapy (Nature Chemical Biology 2021 & 2024; Nature Nanotechnology 2021). Microbial opsin-based optogenetics has been nothing short of revolutionary for the neuroscience field. Owing to the radical difference in the localization and excitability between immune cells and neurons, a parallel evolution of optogenetic tools tailored for the immune system requires totally different design principles. Dr. Zhou was among the first pioneers to combine opsin-free optogenetics, nanotechnology and synthetic immunology to advance the creative concept of optogenetic immunotherapy. These elegant translational studies have been highlighted by STAT news, Nature series “News & Views”, NIGMS Biomedical Beat Blog, JACS Spotlights, Royal Society of Chemistry Editors’ Pick, KBTX channel, Clinical Leader, Photonics Media, Clinical Lab Products, BioTechniques, and BioPhotonics. His creative work has led to the invention of many powerful molecular tools with unprecedented spatiotemporal resolution to address important biomedical questions that are otherwise inaccessible to conventional techniques. From the translational perspective, his group has provided the first proof-of-concept for wireless optogenetic immunomodulation in living mammals, thereby establishing the rationale for future clinical trials of nano-optogenetic immunotherapy to benefit cancer patients.