Yun-Wen Zheng

University of Tsukuba Faculty of Medicine, Japan

Dr. Zheng, a stem cell biologist and a principle investigator, received his PhD of Medical Science at the University of Tsukuba Graduate School of Medicine. From 2003, he has been a team leader for somatic stem cells and pluripotent stem cells as well as for regenerative medicine and therapy. He got his postdoctoral training as a JSPS Fellow (Japan Society for the Promotion of Science) and then became an Assistant Professor at Yokohama City University School of Medicine, next served as an Associate Professor at University of Tsukuba Faculty of Medicine. As a Distinguished Medical Experts and a Distinguished Professor, he is collaborating now with his colleagues at Institute of Regenerative Medicine, Jiangsu University, and School of Biotechnology and Health Sciences, Wuyi University, China. Dr. Zheng is focusing on the isolation of endoderm stem cells as well as liver stem cells in normal and cancer tissues from rodents and human specimens; especially for hepatic primordial development and the microenvironment, and drug development, he is trying to generate chimera rat with humanized liver and blood. Furthermore, for clinical application, he is investigating how to generate the hepatic organoids with multiple cell-cell interactions. He is also interested in cellular reprogramming and expansion of primary human hepatocytes and iPSC-derived hepatic progenitors through small molecules in vitro and in vivo.

Li-Ping Liu

Institution of Regenerative Medicine, Jiangsu University

Dr. Liu is an Assistant Professor at Jiangsu University and an Associate Chief Physician at the Affiliated Hospital of Jiangsu University. She received her MD in Clinical Medicine from the Nanjing Medical University and PhD in Clinical Laboratory Diagnostics from the Jiangsu University. She had a collaborated research at the University of Tsukuba Faculty of Medicine in Japan as Visiting Fellow. Dr. Liu’s research is focused on differentiation of patient iPSCs and cellular transplantation, direct reprogramming and 3D organoid culture. She established a novel suspensive system for iPSCs-derived melanocytes which showed much higher differentiation efficiency and she also verified the long-term in vivo function maintenance of iPSCs-derived melanocytes.

Jian-Yun Ge

University of Tsukuba Faculty of Medicine, Tokyo

Ge Jianyun is a PhD student at the Division of Gastroenterological and Hepatobiliary Surgery, and Organ Transplantation, University of Tsukuba. His research mainly focusses on developing humanized animal models and exploring alternative human cell sources for transplantation. He and his colleagues have achieved liver-humanization in a novel rat model in 2020. Additionally, the same team seeks to address the shortage of primary human hepatocytes by trying a variety of reprogramming strategies. Recently, they have achieved critical success in induction of expandable human hepatoblast-like cells from hiPSC by using specific small molecules, and confirm their in vivo repopulation and functions.